Humans On The Loop

This 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 systems, humankind migrates from an Earth on which most events seem impossibly distant and irrelevant to an Earth defined by nonlinear, often exponential impacts of seemingly-trivial developments anywhere on the planet. This is the century — and the decade — in which many of us have no choice but to learn, the easy way or the hard way, the consequences of our increasing vulnerability to and power over one another. And one of the places this is most vividly apparent is in how truths and untruths ripple at unprecedented speeds across the globe, forcing us into a new and intense cosmopolitanism. In the 1940s, the message was “Loose lips sink ships.” Perhaps the message for the 2020s is “Cognitive biases spread mind viruses.”If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve likely read my 2017 science fiction short story “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’”, a peek into our present-day post-truth carnival funhouse where AI-assisted forgeries demand vastly more nuanced and sophisticated methods for navigating fundamental uncertainty, far greater humility about our validity claims, and revolutionary tools for thinking together. We have to learn to communicate the degree and dimension of our confidence and of our doubt — to learn how we can rigorously restore the trust necessary for coordination at scale — and Goodly Labs is, in my opinion, one of the most promising efforts in the world right now in this regard. 2024 is very likely to feel like the end of reality for a lot of us, and the stakes are immense: fair presidential elections, concerted ecological action, and effective AI steering policy are all domains of existential risk in which we MUST be able to reconstruct some kind of minimally viable consensus reality. I’d be considerably more worried for our future if I did not know that there are people like Brigham Adams and his amazing team of academics, founders, engineers, and journalists tilting their spears directly at this issue and working around the clock to help midwife that Holy Grail of communications technology: a sane and healthy global brain.Announcement: The Future Fossils Book Club is back! Join me for to discuss Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly on Saturday 27 January and Saturday 10 February from 12p-2p MST. I’ll send Substack and Patreon supporters the link to both calls soon, and there will be a dedicated private discussion channel in the Discord server.✨ Mostly-Complete List of Citations:Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories (MIT News)LOGIN 2009 keynote: gaming in the world of 2030 by Charles Stross (transcript)Ready Player One by Ernst ClineThe meaning of life in a world without work by Yuval Noah Harari (read at web.archive.org or 12ft.io)Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanMotivated Numeracy and The Politics-ridden Brain by Stuff To Blow Your Mind (podcast)Coming Into Being by William Irwin ThompsonExplosive Proofs of Mathematical Truths by Simon DeDeo (lecture video)Stewardship of global collective behavior by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al. (paper)OpenAI's anarchist science chief is a techno-spiritual culthead (Athenil)So You Want To Be A Sorceror In The Age of Mythic Powers by Josh Schrei (podcast)Saul PerlmutterOccupy MovementJamie JoyceLynn MargulisDouglas EngelbartAlexander BeinerDouglas RushkoffSteve JobsStewart BrandW. Brian ArthurJim RuttSense8 (television series)✨ Support My Work:• Subscribe on Substack or Patreon for COPIOUS extras, including private Discord server channels and MANY secret episodes!• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Buy the music of Future Fossils (in this episode: “Olympus Mons” & “Sonnet A”) on Bandcamp.• Buy the books we discuss at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page and I’ll get a cut.• Browse and buy original paintings and prints or email me to commission new work! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

✨ 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 transcendental cosmic matters. In other words, perfect timing for this episode’s conversation about cybernetics and the philosophy of the weird with Megan Phipps, Phil Ford, and J.F. Martel. Lecturer in Media and Information at University of Amsterdam and Phd Research Fellow at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt who writes trippy and insightful papers on topics like Brian Eno, circuit bending, and surveillance capitalism. Phil is an author and musician who teaches musicology at IU Bloomington and infuses his curricula with the profundity he has polished through years of committed Zen practice. J.F. is an author, film-maker, and para-academic online course instructor in media studies and magick, who runs Dungeon and Dragons campaigns on the side. Together, J.F. and Phil host the delicious Weird Studies Podcast, every episode of which triggers in me the Holy Grail of podcast affective listener programming: namely, that I wish I were in the room and part of these discussions. Luckily, I’ve had that opportunity before, to talk about my writing on the material agency of glass in our scientific era…and both of them have been on Future Fossils also, both alone and together. But getting all four of us on one call is a rare and precious thing — and now’s the perfect moment to rap about the emergence of the cybernetic era as a kind of numinous event in human history, a divine invasion that transfigures us and forces us to think about which boundaries *should* melt away and which should stay where evolution learned to put them. You see, we live in an age of multilayer networks — and when our view of humankind transmogrifies from the static image of divine forms to a fluid wash of interweaving processes, the self becomes a metamorphic fugitive and a work of art. When everything’s connected, politics is an aesthetic act and art acquires moral force. Advanced technologies have granted us godlike powers to reshape the world in our image…but “life finds a way” and there are always gremlins, aliens, dinosaurs, and elves lurking latent in the tidy systems diagrams. The beauty of progress necessarily conceals the ugly externalities, the entropy exported in our efforts to arrange wild nature into an image of our lost garden. So what does cybernetics as a way of seeing change for us in terms of how we live? What does it mean to be human in an age of very lively, seemingly intelligent machines? But before we dive headlong into this recording of a conversation so good our first attempt was erased by trickster intervention, let me express my thanks to everyone who has helped me and Future Fossils through a year of (what I hope remains) extraordinary challenge. This show is weird and obstinate in its refusal of clear definition. I follow my muses where they lead me and leave these discussions and soliloquys as fossils of a process of discovery and creativity…and staying true to this defies the logic of the market, which would have us classify ourselves as tidily as possible so we are pre-chewed for the algorithms that determine whether what we make is ever noticed by those over the horizon of organic peer-to-peer suggestion networks. If you’re listening, chances are a friend told you about this show — I’d be surprised if you just found it randomly, and definitely not because a sponsor amplified it. I started Future Fossils under pressure from my friends but keep it going as a kind of Benedictine prayer. However it might seem, it’s lonely work — but every now and then I find I’ve reached somebody where it counts, that I’ve inspired a major life change or just helped you orient yourselves amidst the wider movements of a transformation that once seemed chaotic and now seems symphonic. That’s why I keep this going. Every single time I check my email to discover someone else finds value in my work and shows appreciation with a Patreon, Substack, or Bandcamp sub, it makes my day and takes a little of the sting away from my ongoing balancing of kids and unemployment. I’d like to make this work sustainable in 2024 but I’m still very far from that…so thank you, each and all, for everything you do to help me run this ultramarathon.New patrons I would like to thank include Ian Benouis, EGH2128, Lynn Amores, Robert Cummings, Katie Teague, Slow Dancing Fool, and Brian Mapes.Thank you! And thank you to EVERYONE who chips in every month, or who has left or will ever leave a good review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or who shares this show with your friends…and a special

✨ 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 fabulous music group Glo Torch!). Thanks to the generous invitation of Regen Foundation CEO Gregory Landua, I met Amber and Michael for an in-person recording at the Regen Summit — easily one of the most inspiring Web3 events I’ve ever attended — in between jam sessions with a few dozen others working at the intersections of regenerative finance, ecosystem stewardship, distributed ledgers, and civtech. This episode only catches a tiny sliver of the awesome conversations that we had while gathered face-to-face, but it’s a potent morsel nonetheless. We talked about the market’s perverse fascination with talking appliances as a failed attempt to reboot animism, how good design empowers and bad design deprives by making choices possible or not, and why it’s time for a new kind of terms-of-service agreement that allows users to migrate en masse from platforms that have violated people’s trust…along with much else. A very lucid and articulate, yet very playful, trialogue on matters that deserve sincerity but also benefit from childlike curiosity and warmth!Enjoy…✨ Support My Work As A Public Good:• Subscribe on Substack, Patreon, and/or Bandcamp for MANY extras, including a insiders-only discussion group and extra channels on our public Discord Server.• Browse my art and buy original paintings and prints (or commission new work).• Show music: “Sonnet A” from my Double-Edged Sword EP (Bandcamp, Spotify).• Buy the books we mention on the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page.• Make one-off donations directly at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Save up to $70 on an Apollo Neuro wearable from 12/1-12/31 with my affiliate code.✨ Related Links For The Intellectually Voracious:Amber’s Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.Michael’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, and Google Scholar.Citation Statistics from 110 Years of Physical Reviewby Sidney RednerHow Design is Governanceby Amber CaseWe Need More Control Over Our Own User Databy Amber CaseThe Evolution of Surveillance, Part 4: Augments & Amputeesby Michael Garfield (on technology as an other-controlled prosthesis and the vulnerability of cyborgs)“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”by Harlan Ellison✨ SOME Upcoming Episodes:• Jingmai O’Connor, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Chicago, on her singular life and work.• J.F. Martel & Phil Ford of Weird Studies Podcast and Megan Phipps of The University of Amsterdam on Weird Cybernetics.• David Jay Brown and Sara Phinn on their field guide to the entities of DMT hyperspace, published next year by Inner Traditions.• Brigham Adams of Goodly Labs on social science and collective intelligence tools for a memetic immune system.• Michael Skye of VisionForce on his work to help confront the crises faced by contemporary boys and men.• Neil Theise, professor of pathology at NYU, on complex systems science and his new book, Notes on Complexity.✨ Related Archive Episodes:211 - Adam Aronovich on A Cultural Anthropology for The Psychedelic Internet207 - Tech & Community LIVE at Junkyard Social Club with Evan Snyder, Ryan Madson, Roger Toennis, Aaron Gabriel, & Juicy Life204 - Jamie Joyce on The Society Library and Tools for Making Sense Together197 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Lost Civilizations, and The Singularity (Part 1)180 - Web3 & Complex Systems with Park Bach, Sid Shrivastava, Shirley Bekins, & Avel Guénin-Carlut at Complexity Weekend177 - Systems Design & Extended Cognition at Complexity Weekend with Tom Carter, Jenn Huff, Pietro Michelucci, and Richard James MacCowan176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin Summit141 - Nora Bateson on Warm Data vs. The Cold Equations106 - Stowe Boyd on The Future(s) of Work and How to Thrive Amidst Accelerating Change80 - George Dvorsky on Strange Days Ahead: Ethics for Autonomous Machines29 - Sara Huntley (Raising Robots Right)✨ Thanks to Noonautics.org & Gregory Landua of The Regen Foundation for supporting both the show and pioneering research to make the world a better place! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe 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 midwife a new understanding of what it means to be human and a planetary citizen. I have wanted Geoffrey West on Future Fossils since well before I even started working for SFI in 2018, so this episode is the consummation of a years-long journey and I cannot be more excited to share it with you! It feels a little like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, but we live in an increasingly-intertwingled world, so let’s make the best of it! I wouldn’t be where I am today without these two fine minds and their important work. Enjoy…“The consequences of the Anthropocene are the product of innovations, and yet somehow we think the way out is through EVEN MORE innovation. This is a predicament…Innovation has to be looked at critically. One of the interesting things in the history of life is the OPPRESSION of innovation.”– Manfred Laubichler✨ Support Future Fossils & Feed My Kids:• Become a patron on Substack, Patreon, and/or Bandcamp for MANY extras, including a members-only FB Group and private channels on our Discord Server• Donate directly: @futurefossils on Venmo • $manfredmacx on CashApp • @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Browse my art and buy original paintings and prints (or commission new work)• Buy (NEARLY) all of the books we mention on the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page• Show music: “Sonnet A” from my 2008 Double-Edged Sword EP (Bandcamp, Spotify)• Follow my music and awesome, eclectic playlists on Spotify✨ Special thanks to my friends at Noonautics.org & Gregory Landua of The Regen Foundation for supporting both the show and pioneering research to make the world a better place!✨ Your Anthropocene & Technosphere Syllabus:More Is Different: Broken symmetry and the nature of the hierarchical structure of science.Phil AndersonPopulation growth, climate change create an ‘Anthropocene engine' that's changing the planetManfred LaubichlerScale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolutionJaeweon Shin et al.Policies may influence large-scale behavioral tippingKarine Nyborg et al.Teaching the Anthropocene from a Global Perspective (2014!)Manfred Laubichler & Jürgen RennMore from them:Seminar: Co-Evolutionary Perspectives on the TechnosphereAnthropocene Campus | Technosphere / Co-Evolution, presented by Jürgen Renn and Manfred LaubichlerThe Growth and Differentiation of Metabolism: Extended Evolutionary Dynamics in the TechnosphereSFI Community Event - Panel discussion on the Past, Present, and Future of the AnthropoceneSander van der Leeuw, D.A. Wallach, & Geoffrey West, moderated by Manfred LaubichlerWelcome to the Future: Four Pivotal Trends You Should Be Aware OfEd William on the work of Dror PolegThe Future is Fungi: The Rise and Rhizomes of Mushroom CultureJeff VanderMeer, Kaitlin Smith, & Merlin Sheldrake, moderated by Corey PressmanDoes the Ecology of Somatic Tissue Normally Constrain the Evolution of Cancer?John Pepper at SFIThe Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and NightmaresRe: TESCREAL, coined by Timnit Gebru & Émile TorresComplexity Literacy for a Sustainable Digital Transition: Cases and Arguments From Transdisciplinary Education ProgramsGerald SteinerRelevant episodes from my past life as the host of SFI’s Complexity Podcast:Olivia Judson on Major Energy Transitions in Evolutionary HistoryMelanie Moses on Metabolic Scaling in Biology & ComputationChris Kempes on The Physical Constraints on Life & EvolutionThe Future of the Human Climate Niche with Tim Kohler & Marten SchefferScaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcendence or Collapse? (Part 2)Reflections on COVID-19 with David Krakauer & Geoffrey WestMichael Garfield & David Krakauer on Evolution, Information, and Jurassic Park This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe 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. Among other things! It’s a perfect treat for tricky times…Adam’s Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Re Precision Health Page✨ Support Future Fossils & Feed My Kids:• Become a patron on Substack, Patreon, and/or Bandcamp for MANY extras, including a members-only FB Group and private channels on our Discord Server• Donate directly: @futurefossils on Venmo • $manfredmacx on CashApp • @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Browse my art and buy original paintings and prints (or commission new work)• Buy (NEARLY) all of the books we mention on the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page• Show music: “Autocatalysis” (Live Extended Remix) coming this Friday to my Bandcamp!• Follow my music and awesome, eclectic playlists on Spotify✨ Special thanks to my friends at Noonautics.org for supporting both the show and pioneering research!✨ A mostly-but-not-entirely-complete list of references:An Oral History of The End of RealityMAPS Psychedelic Science 2023“A general model for the origin of allometric scaling laws in biology” by Geoffrey West, James Brown, Brian EnquistNew Religions of the 21st Century (Yuval Noah Harari’s Google Tech Talk)The Matrix (franchise)A Glitch in The Matrix (documentary)Doug Rushkoff “fractalnoia” (FF 67)Stanislav Grof“So You Want To Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers?” on The Emerald PodcastWilliam Irwin Thompson - The Borg or BorgesJorge Luis Borges - On Exactitude in ScienceJean Baudrillard - Simulacra and SimulationsChatGPTDouglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Encyclopedia Galactica)Simon DeDeo on plural epistemology (interviewed by MG on Complexity Podcast 72)Erik Davis (FF 132)Bruce Damer (FF 109)Ken Adams (FF 209)Shane Mauss (FF 58)What the heck happened to Reality Sandwich?Mondo 2000 + R.U. Sirius This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe 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 the decade-plus since Schultz’s groundbreaking documentary on the science and philosophy of DMT to look at these themes through a MUCH wider aperture. The three of us go deep and broad on a very far-ranging constellation of topics:(0:00:01) - AI, Psychonautics, Digital Media, Language Models, and The Third Western Psychedelic Revolution(0:17:25) - The Future of AI-Human Cooperation(0:26:42) - Consciousness, Complexity, and Panpsychism(0:31:28) - Randomness, Entanglement, Decentralization, and The Conscious Molecule(0:38:46) - Exploring Consciousness and Futures(0:42:23) - The Future of Journalism and The Role of Independent Documentaries(0:47:55) - Psychedelic Therapy and The Overview Effect(0:51:43) - Transcension Hypothesis, UFOs, and Quantum Physics(0:57:43) - Altered States, Self-Reprogramming, Initiations, and Integration(1:03:32) - Technology's Impact on Consciousness and Humanity(1:13:08) - DataViz, Hyperdimensional Passports, The Future of Identity, and The Role of CommunityIf that sounds like a whirlwind, it is! Find a cozy recliner — and maybe an eye mask — and book an appointment with your favorite peer support/integration counselor, because this is going to be a ride…NOTE: I’m delighted to drop this episode in the midst of a smoking hot debate about what does and does not qualify as “pseudoscience” in the research of consciousness (see coverage by Flora Graham and Erik Hoel). LOL✨ Support Future Fossils & Feed My Kids:• Become a patron on Substack, Patreon, and/or Bandcamp for MANY extras, including a members-only FB Group and private channels on our Discord Server• Donate directly: @futurefossils on Venmo • $manfredmacx on CashApp • @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Browse my art and buy original paintings and prints (or commission new work)• Buy (NEARLY) all of the books we mention on the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page• Buy the show’s soundtrack (recorded live at Psychedelic Science 2023) on Bandcamp• Follow my music and awesome, eclectic playlists on Spotify✨ Special thanks to my friends at Noonautics.org for supporting both the show and pioneering research!✨ Mentions:“Cognition All The Way Down” by Daniel Dennett and Michael Levin James Oroc Seth Lloyd David Chalmers DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman Infoboros: Recursion Across Mind, Matter, and Information by Vidur Mishra Darwin’s Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and The Evolution of The Noosphere by Richard DoyleAlfred North Whitehead Gregory Bateson John Conway Bruce Damer Reggie Watts Melissa Etheridge Tommy Pallotta Klee Irwin ESPD ’55 Wade Davis Dennis McKenna Psychedelic Science 2023 “Corporate Metabolism” by Paco Xander-Nathan William Shatner Mark Nelson Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game by Andrew Gallimore “The transcension hypothesis: Sufficiently advanced civilizations invariably leave our universe, and implications for METI and SETI” by John Smart Ramana Maharshi Ken Wilber The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life by Robert Kegan Michael Persinger Luminarium by Alex Shakar“Why Ibogaine Is Not The Answer To The Opioid Crisis” by Jonathan Dickinson and Dimitri Mugianis R. Buckminster Fuller Liv Boeree Meditation Death Match✨ Keywords:AI, Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Reality, Panpsychic Perspective, Materialist Neurobiological Model, Daniel Dennett, Michael Levin, Cognition All the Way Down, Ethical Implications, Human Development, Information Bombs, Digital Media, Psychonauts, Cyber Culture, Third Western Psychedelic Revolution, Kickstarter, Future Fossils, Album, AI Music Videos, Patreon, Substack, Evolution of Human Beings, Data Streams, Complexity of Systems, Empathy, Life System, Documentaries, Journalism, Hollywood Strike, Unions, Documentary Funding, International Multi-Billion Dollar Psychedelic Industry, UFO Phenomenon, Altered States, Self-Reprogramming, Technology Impact, Humanity, Hyperdimensional Passport, Metaphysical Stamps, Media Ecosystem, Visualizing Data Structures, Neurological Alignment, Spirit Taking Form This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 thirtieth anniversary of Alien Dreamtime’s theatrical release, a major if initially under-appreciated moment in the history of digital film-making, and I had the good fortune to meet up with Ken here in Santa Fe for his commemorative screening at The Jean Coctea Cinema. What followed was an EPIC storytelling download about bold underground innovation told by one of the most soulful, thoughtful, heartfelt, humble, humorous, and generous people I know.✨ Support Future Fossils:• Become a patron on Substack, Patreon, and/or Bandcamp for MANY extras, including a members-only FB Group and private channels on our Discord Server!• Buy the show’s soundtrack (recorded live at Psychedelic Science 2023) on Bandcamp.• Browse my art and buy original paintings and prints (or commission new work).• Dig my reading list at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page!• Follow my music and awesome, eclectic playlists on Spotify.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo • $manfredmacx on CashApp • @michaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Chapters, Summary, & Keywords provided by Podium.Page:(0:00:00) - Reminiscing on Psychedelic Underground and Filmmaking(0:10:07) - Ken’s Childhood & Early Adulthood(0:25:04) - Screenings and Influence of Psychedelic Movie(0:30:06) - McKenna and Psychedelic Community Influence(0:35:24) - Nature, Doubt, Validation(0:44:23) - Late Night Studio Discovery and Reflection(0:49:30) - Non-Human Encounters and Embracing the Weird(0:57:17) - Encounters With Terence McKenna After His Passing(1:10:46) - Spiritual Experiences and the Need for Change(1:18:51) - Life, Legacy, and Creative Expression ReflectionsJoin me as I host Ken Adams, an experimental filmmaker, documentarian, and psychedelic explorer. We journey through his life from his childhood in Louisiana, his graduate studies in sociology and anthropology, to his discovery of LSD, and his eventual meeting with Terence McKenna. Ken shares his experiences with psychedelics and computers, and we discuss the impact these have had on his life and work. He provides insight into the psychedelic world in San Francisco, shedding light on the risks people took to make psychedelia accessible.This episode offers a fascinating look into the world of psychedelic filmmaking, with Ken Adams sharing how he created a business model from showcasing his experimental film. From the Adobe theater in Austin to the Roxy in San Francisco, Ken reveals how his work was embraced in the psychedelic space. He further explores the influence of Terence McKenna, discussing how Terence navigated the expectations of being a celebrity, his thoughts on psychedelics, and his ability to unite the psychedelic community.Finally, we examine Ken's experiences with non-human entities in altered states of consciousness, as well as his ideas on serving the common good. Ken shares his unusual encounters and his belief in the need for imaginative solutions to the issues facing the planet. We also reflect on the sadness and loneliness of the digital era, and discuss how digital arts are changing our world. Join us as we traverse the path of creativity, courage, and psychedelic exploration.Psychedelic, Filmmaking, Terence McKenna, San Francisco, Digital Filmmaking, Louisiana, Sociology, Anthropology, LSD, Art World, Austin, Digital Arts, Transmutation of Trauma, Winter Solstice 2012, Non-Human Entities, Altered States, Spiritual Experiences, Imagination, Transformation, Existential Issues, Melancholia, The Digital Age, Oral History, Unborn, Dreaming, Noble Things, Valuable MistakesSpecial thanks to my friends at Noonautics.org for supporting both the show and pioneering research! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.comThis 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 intimate elixir bar high above the fray of the conference to riff on what it will take to have the psychedelic renaissance so many of us THOUGHT we were helping incubate and midwife (as opposed to what we got).✨ Support Future Fossils:• Subscribe to (and review!) Future Fossils anywhere you go for podcasts.• Then, support my work on Substack or Patreon for many, MANY extras, including our members-only Facebook Group and Discord Server’s special private channels!• You can also buy my artwork (or commission new custom art) and/or music.• Follow my music and annually-updated listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo • $manfredmacx on CashApp • @michaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Chapters and keywords provided by Podium.Page:(0:00:00) - Navigating the CollapseMidwifery, courage, acculturation, pleasure-seeking, True Human Reimagining Humaneness, gracefully facing collapse.(0:08:04) - Foundations of Psychedelic Renaissance ExploringWe explore wholeness, psychoactivity, Samantha Sweetwater's journey, and David Bohm's quote on fragmentation and perception.(0:26:10) - Psychedelics and the Evolution of WholenessPsychedelics, Maslow's hierarchy, Richard Doyle's work, and nature's evolutionary process are discussed to catalyze holotropic states of consciousness and unity.(0:37:22) - Communion and the Circle of LifeWe explore the implications of our current ways of doing humanness on the life cycle of a complex life-bearing planet, and how to cultivate a mastery of relationship and the between.(0:54:10) - Future of Meta-inviduality and BalanceWe explore academic prestige, decolonization, life-centrism, psychedelics, and the Luciferic/Ahrimanic balance.(1:01:38) - Paradigms of Development and Igniting MomentsPsychedelics access animism, integrate individual missions, explore Stoned Ape theory, and set conditions for humanity's flowering.(1:11:15) - Exploring AI, Technology, and DevolutionWe explore technology, AI, nature, and aging to find love, understanding, and elegant solutions.✨ Keywords:Consciousness, Psychedelics, Collapse, Humaneness, Wholeness, Psychoactivity, David Bohm, Stanislaw Grof, Abraham Maslow, Richard Doyle, Macroorganism, Interconnection, Ken Wilber, Terence McKenna, Decolonization, Biocentrism, Luciferic Principle, Ahrimanic Principle, Midwifery, Animism, Stoned Ape Theory, AI, Technology, De-evolution, Nature, Aging, Kate Raworth, ✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and love it!• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• Musicians, let me recommend you get a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.📝 Transcript for Patrons:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.comThis 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 Roger Toennis, former Google employee turned Director of Consciousness Hacking CO Aaron Gabriel Neyer, and “self-metaprogrammer” Tom Bassett aka Juicy Life.In a rather fast-paced hour, we explore what is emerging in an age of learning machines and reimagined urban spaces and radical new modes of social order. This was one of those delightful in-the-flesh discussions that CLEARLY left us all enriched and hopeful for a world that, while out of our control, still shines with tasty possibility.Chapters and keywords provided by my AI buddies at Podium.Page:(0:00:00) - Exploring Interdependence and Community Dynamics(0:03:50) - The Responsibility of Technology and Parenting(0:15:48) - AI's Impact on Art and IP(0:23:21) - The Intersection of Technology and Physicality(0:31:25) - Exploring Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Shifts(0:41:00) - The Future of Technology and Ethics(0:45:58) - Technology and Interdependence in Society(0:50:19) - The Interplay Between Interdependence and Technology(0:55:47) - Technology, Culture, and Individual Impact(1:01:27) - Tensegrity and the Future of Work(1:05:37) - Exploring Hope and Creating New ParadigmsInterdependence, Community Dynamics, COVID-19, Human Connection, Urban Spaces, Technology, Parenting, Holistic Thinking, Future Tech, Corporate Power, Open-Source Language Models, Artificial Intelligence, Cultural Shifts, Individual Purpose, Operating System, Individualistic Consciousness, Tensegrity, Hope, Paradigms, Funemployment, Fractal Pods, Neural Nets, Fractal TribeEnjoy and do not hesitate to reach out if this kindles something in you!✨ Support Future Fossils:• Subscribe to (and review!) Future Fossils anywhere you go for podcasts.• Then, support my work on Substack or Patreon for many, MANY extras, including our members-only Facebook Group and Discord Server’s special private channels!• You can also buy my artwork (or commission new custom art) and/or music.• Follow my music and annually-updated listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo • $manfredmacx on CashApp • @michaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and love it!• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• Musicians, let me recommend you get a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.✨ Patrons-Only Extras Below The Fold:🎸 Live at Honeymoon Brewery Full-Concert VideoEnjoy this full-length video I captured at one of my favorite concerts in over twenty years of music! This show at Honeymoon Brewery (RIP) was what I always wanted: outside, under a lovely tree, surrounded by family and friends, my kids playing with my friends’ kids, great kombucha, cool autumn air. My daughter wore the new dress she had earned by making and then selling art with me. I got to show off my new eight-string strandberg guitar and fresh original material. We all got wonderfully buzzed. I’m heartbroken that Honeymoon closed this location (curse you, Santa Fe, for killing their amazing outdoor concert series!) but at least we have this fossil.📝 Episode 207 Extended Show Notes & TranscriptThanks everyone for your support! This year has not been easy and you’re helping me buy time to be with my burned-out family and finish major projects before I’m subsumed by yet another bout of soul-destroying busywork.

This 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 our learning platform…everyone into the pool for my first “Michael plays professor” cohort!This week on Future Fossils, I’m joined by returning guest my friend Scout Rainer Wiley, metamodern ritual artist, expectation-defying wunderkind, and host of the blog and podcast The Oscillator’s Stone for a conversation about…well…Here, I’m going to let the superb language model at Podium.Page break it down for you. I wouldn’t call this list “exhaustive” since we let the ADHD faeries carry our discussion wherever they liked, but I’m pretty impressed with this briefing:Key Takeaways:1. The episode delves into the complex intersection of art, culture, and artificial intelligence. It brings to light the implications of AI on our lives, potentially liberating us from the attention economy and the idea of work as a requirement for survival.2. The conversation touches upon the significance of local scenes in the era of globalization and scrutinizes the perils of celebrity worship.3. Intellectual property rights and ownership boundaries in the age of late capitalism are explored, sparking a debate about fairness and the redistribution of wealth in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world.4. The episode delves into socio-economic issues, discussing how rising real estate prices and the scarcity of affordable housing impact culture.Unanswered Questions and Potential Inquiries:1. How can AI be used to promote cultural diversity rather than appropriating and diluting it?2. How can the power of AI be harnessed to address socio-economic issues such as housing affordability?3. Can AI help us understand and navigate the complexities of celebrity culture, or will it exacerbate the problems?4. What does the future of intellectual property rights look like in an age of increasingly advanced AI?5. How can the insights of indigenous and black sci-fi writers inform our approach to the future?6. As technology continues to reshape our world, how do we maintain the importance of local scenes and individuality?7. How can the lessons of metamodernism inform our approach to the future, particularly in relation to technology and AI?8. Can AI play a role in addressing ancestral traumas, and if so, how?Overall, this podcast episode offers a thought-provoking exploration of the intersections of art, culture, and AI, sparking questions about our future in an increasingly AI-driven world.HA! Wow. There you have it. Imagine all that only through the filter of two delightfully bizarre transmedia philosopher-artists at their Casual Friday best.✨ Chapters:(0:00:00) - Culture's Impact on Art Exploration(0:06:16) - AI's Impact on Work and Culture(0:21:05) - Scale and Local Scenes(0:27:49) - Scene and Cultural Shift Impact(0:33:42) - Doom, Hope, and the World Reflections(0:48:54) - Metamodernism, Apocalyptic Themes, and Personal Reflections(0:58:38) - Exploring Ancestral Traumas and Embracing Romanticism(1:05:49) - Exploring Popularity, Culture, and the Future✨ Mentions:Future Fossils 195 - Emergency AI Art Panel with Topher Sipes, Jamie Curcio, Evo Heyning, Julian Picaza, and Micah DaigleMusic in this episode:“Biome Seven” from Biosphere Dreaming“The Luminous Night” from Empty FramesJohnny DeppAnson MountWeezer - “My Name is Jonas”Pierre-August Cot - The Storm (painting)Donald TrumpStuart Davis - Bright ApocalypseElroy CraichDaniel Görtz + Michael Garfield + Tom Amarque on metamodern deep futurismStar Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV series)Taylor Swift - “Blank Space” (music video)MitskiHarley Quin (Batman franchise)Queen’s Gambit (TV series)Victoria Nelson - The Secret Life of PuppetsMichael Garfield - “In Defense of Star Trek: Picard and Discovery”✨ 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.Follow me and my annually-updated listening recommendations on Spotify.Join our lively members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels) for rewarding discourse on tap every day!✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page!• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy d

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.comBefore 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-response game with Greg Thomas, co-founder of Jazz Leadership with his wife Jewel Kinch-Thomas, and Stephanie Lepp, CEO of Synthesis Media and multiple Webby-winning transmedia culture hacker whose friendship I made interviewing her for episode 154.Among many other things, we discuss these superb articles by Jewel Kinch-Thomas:Jazz Improvisation: Lessons for ConversationReciprocity: The Ebb and Flow of Relationship BuildingChange Leadership …and these pieces by Greg:Race and Jazz: A Candid ViewA Paradigm Shift on RaceCultural Intelligence: Transcending Race, Embracing Cosmos…and these pieces by and with Greg at Free Black Thought:Deracialization NowJazz, The Omni-American Ideal, and a Future Beyond BigotryConsidering Deracialization: A Response to Glenn Loury and Clifton Roscoe✨ Chapters:(0:00:00) - Departing From The Score To Navigate Transition(0:13:08) - Jazz, Business Leadership, and Conversation(0:31:37) - Principles of Jazz Leadership and Anti-Debate(0:49:53) - Exploring Reciprocity, Power, and Disagreement(1:03:33) - Deracialization, Defining Jazz, and Integral Theory(1:19:40) - Race, Jazz, Cultural Somatics, and Collective Intelligence✨ Mentions:Tyler Marghetis (Complexity 67), Allan Combs, Charles Eisenstein (Future Fossils 85), Doug Rushkoff (Future Fossils 67), Tech Ethics As Psychedelic Parenting at CBA, Stewart Brand’s Pace Layers, Robert Poynton (Future Fossils 196), Jewel Kinch-Thomas, Albert Perry, Ian Leslie at Aeon Magazine: “A Good Scrap”, Lynn Margulis, Daniel Schmachtenberger (Future Fossils 51), Zak Stein (Future Fossils 97), Joseph Campbell, Heinrich Zimmer, Ralph Ellison, Peter Limberg, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Danielle Allen, Glenn LouryFull show notes and transcript generated by Podium.Page for patrons down below.✨ 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.(Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.)This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels). Join us!✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page!• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• And musicians, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park (and that’s a link to a new AI music video).✨ Full (machine-generated) show notes and transcript below the fold for patrons:

This 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 BackstopStephanie LeppYuval Noah Harari SapiensAlison GopnikThe Hyperion CantosThe Internet ArchiveEd 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! Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels). Join us!✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page!• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park (and that’s a link to a new AI music video).✨ And listen, folks…if you haven’t seen my AI music videos yet…get on it: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Pardon 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 founder Kevin Kelly, who sits on the board of one of my most-beloved projects, The Long Now Foundation (I wrote a bunch of pieces for their blog that you can find here and presented at their 2020 Ignite Talks here). I had Kevin on in episodes 128 to discuss his thoughts on the evolution of technology and augmented reality in particular, and again in 165 to discuss his book Vanishing Asia and the tensions between the economic opportunity and ecological/cultural erosion of urbanization, but today we’re having a far more grounded conversation about the wisdom he’s accumulated in his 71 years of living — much of which he has generously encapsulated for us in his latest book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.We also meander into banter about cognitive pluralism and the tango with generative AI, with specific references to rants here and here.Kevin’s a treasure. I’m honored to share this with you.✨ 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! (This episode features “Throwing Sparks” and “Delta Pavonis.”) Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels). Join us!The next Jurassic Park Book Club call will be on June 13th at 3 pm Mountain! I’ll share the call link to Discord.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page!• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park (and that’s a link to a new AI music video).✨ And listen, folks…if you haven’t seen my AI music videos yet…get on it: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

In 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 conversation and engage the evolutionary edge of your own being as a work of art! This is a fun, weird, twisted rabbit hole I’m glad to share with you.✨ 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! (This episode features vibes from “Biosphere Dreaming”)Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels). Join us!✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.✨ Mentioned Media & People (incomplete):Caveat’s Patreon“Giving In To Astonishment” by Michael Garfield (audio/text)Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide To The Art of Long-Term World Travelby Rolf PottsRolf Potts on Future FossilsWikipedia list of incidents at Disney WorldTeam Rodent: How Disney Devours The Worldby Carl HiaasenApocalypse Cabaret on FBThree Questions About Creating Transformational Experiences Anywhereby Caveat MagisterTroy DaytonMicah DaigleJacqueline NorthScout WileyNaomi MostMitch MignanoJake KobrinHenry AndrewsRobin ZiiroConner HabibMichael AngeloTada HozumiAlejandro JodorowskyMore Caveat:FF 153Plutopia PodcastEamon Armstrong’s Life Is A Festival PodcastBurning Man PodcastKosmos JournalBook Excerpts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 and the social fabric, Westworld HBO, Star Wars Mandalorian vs. Andor vs. Rebels, chatGPT, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, H.P. Lovecraft, the Sheldrake-Abraham-McKenna Trialogues, Charles Stross’ Accelerando, Adventure Time, Stanislav Grof’s LSD psychotherapy, Francisco Varela, Blake Lemoine’s meltdown over Google LaMDA, Integrated Information Theory, biosemiotics, Douglas Hofstadter, Max Tegmarck, Erik Davis, Peter Watts, The Psychedelic Salon, Melanie Mitchell, The Teafaerie, Kevin Kelly, consilience in science, Fight Club, and more…Or, if you prefer, here’s a rundown of the episode generated by A.I. c/o my friends at Podium.page:In this episode, I explore an ambitious and well-connected conversation with guests KMO, a seasoned podcaster, and Kevin Walnut [sic], a close friend and supporter of the arts in Santa Fe. We dive deep into their thoughts on the social epistemology crisis, science fiction, deep fakes, and ontology. Additionally, we discuss their opinions on the Star Trek franchise, particularly their critiques of the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard and Discovery. Through this engaging conversation, we examine the impact of storytelling and the evolution of science fiction in modern culture. We also explore the relationship between identity, media, and artificial intelligence, as well as the ethical implications of creating sentient artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the philosophical questions surrounding AI's impact on society and human existence. Join us for a thought-provoking and in-depth discussion on a variety of topics that will leave you questioning the future of humanity and our relationship with technology.✨ Before we get started, three big announcements!* I am leaving the Santa Fe Institute, in part to write a very ambitious book about technology, art, imagination, and Jurassic Park. You can be a part of the early discussion around this project by joining the Future Fossils Book Club’s Jurassic Park live calls — the first of which will be on Saturday, 29 April — open to Substack and Patreon supporters:* Catch me in a Twitter Space with Nxt Museum on Monday 17 April at 11 am PST on a panel discussing “Creative Misuse of Technology” with Minne Atairu, Parag Mital, Caroline Sinders, and hosts Jesse Damiani and Charlotte Kent.* I’m back in Austin this October to play the Astronox Festival at Apache Pass! Check out this amazing lineup on which I appear alongside Juno Reactor, Entheogenic, Goopsteppa, DRRTYWULVZ, and many more great artists!✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe 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! (This episode features “A Better Trip” from my recent live album by the same name.)Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group and Discord server. Join us!Episode cover art by KMO and a whole bouquet of digital image manipulation apps.✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• These show notes and the transcript were made possible with Podium.Page, a very cool new AI service I’m happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.✨ Mentioned Media:KMO Show S01 E01 - 001 - Michael Garfield and Kevin WohlmutAn Edifying Thought on AI by Charles EisensteinIn Defense of Star Trek: Picard & Discovery by Michael GarfieldImprovising Out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael GarfieldAI and the Transformation of the Human Spirit by Steven Hales(and yes I know it’s on Quill

Welcome 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, and how to provide access to these therapies in a way that respects Indigenous knowledge.✨ Chapters:(0:00:01) - Exploring Transcendence, Trauma, and Transformation(0:08:27) - Psychedelic Use With Intention(0:17:11) - Psychedelics and Substance Abuse(0:26:13) - Exploring Relationships to Psychoactive Substances(0:41:59) - Embodiment in Psychedelic Therapy(0:54:30) - Addiction, Trauma, and The Transhuman Conditions(1:03:20) - Healing Through Connection and Community(1:09:04) - The Freedom of Exploration(1:12:15) - Authentic Expression & Vulnerability(1:15:26) - Psychedelics for Exploration(1:27:55) - The Consequences of Collective Consciousness Freedom(1:43:02) - Supporting Independent Work✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe 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! (This episode features “Ephemeropolis” from the EP of the same name & “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP.)Or if you’re into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group and Discord server. Join us!✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• These show notes were supplemented with Podium.Page, a very cool new AI service I’m happy to endorse. Sign up at https://hello.podium.page/?via=michael and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help edit transcripts for the Future Fossils book project, please email or DM me: Email | Twitter | Instagram)• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park.✨ Mentioned & Related Episodes:7 - Shane Mauss (Psychedelic Comedy)10 - Anthony Thogmartin & David Krantz (Future Music)27 - Rak Razam & Niles Heckman (5-MeO DMT & Consciousness)58 - Shane Mauss (Psychonautic Adventures at the Edge of Genius & Madness)59 - Charles Shaw (Trauma, Addiction, and Healing)62 - David Krantz (Cannabis Nutrigenomics)68 - Charles Shaw (Soul in the Heart of Darkness)96 - Malena Grosz on Community-Led Party Culture vs. Corporate "Nightlife"100 - The Teafaerie on DMT, Transhumanism, and What To Do with All of God's Attention103 - Tricia Eastman on Facilitating Psychedelic Journeys to Recover from An Age of Epidemic Trauma112 - Mitsuaki Chi on Serving the Mushroom117 - Eric Wargo on Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious131 - Jessica Nielson & Link Swanson on Psychedelic Science & Too Much Novelty136 - Alyssa Gursky on Psychedelic Art Therapy & The Future of Communication156 - Stuart Davis on Zen, Aliens, and Psychedelics168 - Mikey Lion & Malena Grosz on Festival Time, Life-Changing Trips, and Community in COVID171 - Eric Wargo on Precognitive Dreamwork and The Philosophy of Time Travel172 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Systems Thinking, Fractal Governance, Ontopunk, and Queering W.E.I.R.D. Modernity176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin Summit✨ Keywords:Transcendence, Trauma, Transformation, Festival World, Psychedelics, Therapeutic Applications, Cultural Roots, Addiction, Collective Consciousness, Freedom, Access, Indigenous Knowledge, Intentionality, Context, Consumer Culture, Spiritual Ego, Health Coaching, Mental Health Counseling, Gender Identity, Substance Abuse, Private Practice, Ancient Cultural Roots, Modern Therapeutic Applications, Transformational Festival Culture, Memory, Embodiment, Rat Park Experiment, Brain Inference, Harlan Ellison, Opioid Crisis, Connection, Community, Oppression, Systems of Power, Self-Harm, Interc

This 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 torch-bearer along the paths of both professional uncompromising creativity and openly psychedelic parenting. And now he leads the way in helping me and his planet-wide fanbase learn how to process grief and rise from the ashes of loss like a badass phoenix…A few weeks ago, the barn he inherited from his father — in which he kept all of his creative technology and projects — burned to the ground. Here is the intense and vulnerable two-hour conversation we had about his loss and the spiritual transformations he has undergone since. For the first time ever, Android gives a play-by-play recounting of what happened that fateful morning and how he has grown in the aftermath of losing his “dragon horde” of technology, art, and personal records. And we explore the science and philosophy and esoteric interpretation of what it means to grow beyond the envelope of the human organism into our “extended phenotypes” of technological augmentation — and then to lose it all in a single incandescent moment, laid bare by an Act of God to face the world with sudden and intense rawness.This is a powerful, one, folks. I’m honored to share it with you…(Big thanks to Lucid News for inspiring me to do this. You can find a very, very tightly-edited transcript of this discussion on their website.)Editor’s Note: I mention a passage from William Irwin Thompson’s The American Replacement in Nature in which I misquote him as speaking on “prophets and pastoralists” when in fact he wrote about “mystics and moralists.” You can hear the correct quote in this track from my 2016 Boom Festival performance, which plays at the end of this episode:"The moralist tends to think the laws of God are more on his side than on his enemy's, so he will try through faith and religion and the exercise of ritual to get God to settle down with him and go along with his way of life. The mystic, however, is not a moralist, for motion, complexity, and an angelic-demonic ambiguity in which one's enemy is also a part of a divine manifestation in history are all part of a cosmic life on the other side of the fence. Home means a lot to moralists, but the mystic is society's alien and is not allowed to have a home smaller than the universe. Any time he tries to settle for less, to settle down and set up fences, God appears as the moving whirlwind."- William Irwin Thompson✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or PatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server so I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Mentioned & Related Links:Future Fossils Episode 111 - Android Jones on Analog/Digital, Painting the Sutras, & Being an Artist DadComplexity Episode 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeComplexity Episode 35 - Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Ben RidgwayA Manifesto For Live Painting by Michael GarfieldDeath of a SalesmanTrezor Cryptocurrency WalletsJohn Perry BarlowTheme Music: “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts EP by Michael Garfield✨ A Special One-Off Sneak Peek at A New Offering for Subscribers:I recently promised members of my Patreon/Substack members-only Facebook group, where I ordinarily share on the order of ten cool external links a day, that I’d be moving my Web curation into a special newsletter supplement for paid subscribers. Here is a public-facing glimpse at yet one more thing you can expect in return for supporting the intense love’s labor that goes into the show and my other creative work:Recommended Reading:Copyright won't solve creators' Generative AI problem (Cory Doctorow)We’re in a productivity crisis, according to 52 years of data. Things could get really bad. (Michael Simmons)What kind of a "metamodernist" am I, exactly? (Scout Reina Wiley)Successful AI Will Usher in a New Era of Theology (Caveat Magister)Developers Created AI to Generate Police Sketches. Experts Are Horrified (Chloe Xiang at Motherboard)Getty sues Stability AI for copying 12M photos and imitating famous watermark (Ashley Belanger at Ars Techn

“We want to be careful when we’re in conflict on the internet.”– Tadaaki HozumiTadaaki 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 artificial intelligences, the deep commonalities between UFO lore and nature spirit myths, inspirited robots, the simulation hypothesis, and more. Just as with part one, this is not for the epistemically over-determined or the philosophically faint of heart! I don’t cling to a point of view for this podcast and I suggest that you don’t either. But if Tada and his collaborator Georgie Rein Lo are right, we may all be the player-characters in a dragon’s endless dreaming. And honestly, that would explain some things…Strap in and turn on for a discussion we hope will help you navigate the very weird-to-modern-Western-minds few years to come!(Once again, pardon the delay — I’ve been eager to get the entirety of this profound and illuminating discussion out for over a month! Never a dull moment in my home with two small kids. Thanks for your patience and understanding over the last few years as Future Fossils has swayed but not fallen in the strong winds of my suddenly-a-householder life…)✨ Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts!✨ Support The Show:Subscribe to the podcast, essays, music, and news on Substack or PatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server so I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Mentioned & Related Media:Future Fossils 197 with Tadaaki Hozumi (Part 1)More info on the Hozumi clanlunmu.io (Tada's new project with Rein Lo)“Arts and AI: ‘You May Live To See Man-Made Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension’” by Jamie CurcioHigh Weirdness by Erik DavisLiminal Dreaming by Jennifer Dumpert“The Holy Spirit Board” (Christian Ouija Board)Improvising out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael GarfieldKerri Chandler (reel-to-reel DJ)A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing The Universe by Michael S. Schneider“The Story of Calculus” SFI Community Lecture by Steven StrogatzProgramming The Universe by Seth LloydThe Infoboros by Vidur MishraRich “M0b1us” Doyle“Aphanopoiesis” by Nora BatesonFuture Fossils 65 & 71 (on Blade Runner 2049)Future Fossils 14 (on Westworld HBO)Everything You Wanted To Know But Were Never Told by David IckePassport to Magonia by Jacques ValléeSupernatural by Graham Hancock“When The Orbit Curtain Falls” by Michael Garfield (song)Tom MontalkGraham Hancock on Underwater Japanese Temples & The Great SphinxFuture Fossils 124 with Norman KatzSense8 (Netflix)“How Stories Last” by Neil Gaiman at LongNow.org“The Evolution of Covert Signaling” by Paul Smaldino et al.“The 100 Oldest Companies” by Kevin Kelly at LongNow.org“Unlikely Historical Events” by Jason Kottkeaibo (robot dog by SONY)Future Fossils 57 - Conner Habib & Mitch Mignano on Occult BiologyTheme Music: “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts EP by Michael Garfield This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 and either consider totally insane or uncanny in its prophetic insights. I don’t confidently recommend every mention in the show notes as an authoritative final source, but I refuse to censor our citations out of my commitment to humility about What’s Really Going On. This is a truly off-road dialogue on ideas so far outside of the dominant world-space of early 21st-Century Western thinking as to constitute a reputational risk, but what else is this show for than to showcase maverick thinkers and strange, potentially transformative speculations anchored in careful independent study?Strap in for a crash course on hidden temple texts, occult perspectives on the analog-digital divide, and alternative narratives so bizarre and interesting I consider them worth review on aesthetic grounds alone! Tada is one of those “too weird to live, too rare to die” wizards and wonders I’m honored to call a friend and colleague, and I’m delighted to have them back on Future Fossils to explore the Real with you.In Tada’s own blog post about this episode, they say:“It was an incredible opportunity to get to speak so freely about ancient-future matters on a prolific podcast with a name that basically captures the essence of the discussion. I've always appreciated Michael's kindness and bravery as a host, not just of a podcast but of whole online communities, who is committed to giving his listenership and community the permission to explore the strangest possibilities of human existence.”✨ Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts!This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server so I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?✨ Support The Show:Subscribe to the podcast, essays, music, and news on Substack or PatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Mentioned & Related Media:Future Fossils 149 - Cultural Somatics & Ritual as Justice with Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, and Naomi MostGraham Hancock’s hotly-debated Netflix series Ancient ApocalypseFuture Fossils 14 - WESTWORLD Problems (feat. Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops)Future Fossils 65 - John David Ebert (Hypermodernity & Blade Runner 2049)The Evolution of Surveillance by Michael GarfieldImprovising out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael GarfieldFuture Fossils 179 - Scout-Lieder Wiley on Transrational Oracles & Magical Thinking in The 21st CenturyFuture Fossils 195 - A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher SipesVagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf PottsT.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim BeyWilliam Irwin Thompson – Exodus as Revolution (Prophecy and Revolution: Five Lectures on the Old Testament, #3)Future Fossils 178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch InstitutionsRemember Who You Are Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' from by David IckeThe Arcturus Probe: Tales and Reports of an Ongoing Investigation by Jose ArguellesEVIDENCE OF A MASSIVE THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS ON MARS IN THE PAST: The Cydonian Hypothesis and Fermi's Paradox by J. E. BrandenburgTakenouchi DocumentsFuture Fossils 117 - Eric Wargo on Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the UnconsciousSun-Moon Revelations / Hitsuki Shinji (1, 2)Future Fossils 176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin SummitComing Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness by William Irwin ThompsonFuture Fossils 181 - Jim Rutt on The Pre- and Post-History of GameBUCLA social scientist Paul Smaldino on covert signaling, identity, and social learningTen Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron LanierMore info on the Hozumi clanRein Lo (1, 2)Japanese-Jewish Common Ancestry TheoryNigihayahiFuxi Nuwa (compass and square)Episode Music: “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts EP by Michael Garfield This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Rate and review the show at Apple PodcastsBrowse 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 Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, where he runs executive education programs that help leaders understand and work with complex change. He also runs Yellow Learning (“a regenerative space for a complex world”), which I recommend highly as the kind of group experience you actually WANT to be involved in online…and he’s a husband and father of three adult sons who helps his wife run an organic beef farm in rural Spain.But perhaps the most salient point is that he wrote an amazing book called Do Improvise — one of the finest I’ve ever encountered on the subject — so that’s the focus of our conversation. Join us as we discuss how to tune in, surrender, and make the most of whatever life throws your way…This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server, which I am releasing into the wilds as a fan-operated platform in 2023.PS — I’ve moved Future Fossils to Substack. There you will find my entire archives AND an increasingly-complete (but as yet not-entirely-migrated) repository of essays and blogs dating back to the Mesozoic. (If you prefer Substack over Patreon, I’m totally happy to take your support there, as well as or instead of…but I have not yet figured out how to handle posting subscribers-only content to both platforms.)✨ Support The Show:Subscribe to my work in all media on PatreonSubscribe to the podcast and monthly newsletter on SubstackBuy my original paintings or commission new work ✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPalBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)✨ Mentioned & Related Media:Stuart Firestein on Ignorance, Failure, Uncertainty, and The Optimism of ScienceMG Twitter thread re: Weird Studies and ergodic vs. nonergodic storytellingThe Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. TolkienGary Hirsch (friend of Rob’s)Margaret Heffernan on Hidden Forces Podcast: How To Navigate an Unpredictable WorldFree Play by Stephen NachmanovitchEverything’s An Offer by Rob Poynton (unavailable at Bookshop.org)Exaptation of the Guitar by MGThe Future is Exapted and Remixed by MGEpisode Music: Beta Pavonis & Delta Pavonis by MG This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Complete show notes at PatreonRate and review the show at Apple PodcastsBrowse 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 are artists Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, James Curcio, Topher Sipes, and Julian Picaza — all of whom I hold in high esteem and all of whom are doing fascinating things both with A.I. tools and without them.I recommend this profound discussion for some refreshing sobriety in what has so far proven to be a totally crazy pants public discourse dominated by people who either submit unthinkingly to new technologies or run from them screaming without anchoring their perspectives in any kind of historical perspective whatsoever…Be sure to give this episode’s extensive show notes your careful attention, as I’ve collected here a whole semester’s worth of reading and listening materials on this and adjacent subjects with the goal of having a single master compendium to drop into public threads on these subjects whenever possible. (I of course encourage you to do the same!)This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!Lastly, a note about the audio: Once again I had horrible technical issues with my recording platform and had to spend time piecing this conversation back together instead of giving it a proper edit and mix treatment. My apologies for not managing to match the style to the substance…but this conversation is so timely and urgent I didn’t want to waste another two weeks polishing it before getting it to you.Enjoy, and thanks for listening!✨ Other Ways To Support The Show:• MichaelGarfield.substack.com for digest emails• MichaelGarfieldArt.com for art prints and original paintings• MichaelGarfield.Bandcamp.com for over 100 hours of original music• linktr.ee/michaelgarfield for a trove of creations and numerous options for tipping Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Complete, EXTENSIVE show notes at PatreonRate and review the show at Apple PodcastsBrowse 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 Evolution (Templeton Press) is a meticulously researched, cheeky and inspiring romp through both the living and extinct worlds, challenging a handful of widespread beliefs and offering provocative alternatives. Conway Morris is a character, even amidst the strange ranks of his fellow natural history researchers, and his arguments bear careful scrutiny. As someone drawn to mavericks and weirdos and enamored by contrarian perspectives, I can’t help but like his work — and reading him forced me to reconsider some of my assumptions even as it validated other long-held hunches.In this episode, we talk about his book and what his work implies — and I get fanboy on him and assault him with a bunch of lengthy questions like Tim Murphy in Jurassic Park. Strap in for a deep dive into evolution’s laziness, complexity and process, cooption and repurposing of novel traits, great puzzles in prehistory, ancient food webs, evolutionary radiation, symbiosis, flowers, death, and more… And when you’re done, go read his book and dig a dozen more related episodes on Patreon! Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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, caring, and starry-eyed vibe at all times…an utterly unique and finely-honed heart and intellect who stands out from the rest of my belovedly strange cohort of Austin festival-going slacker friends.I’ve been chasing her down to be on the podcast for years and am delighted she and I finally managed to link up to record this potent dialogue on the relationality of humankind and the wild world in which we are inextricably entangled, the substantive differences between our simulations and the originals they fail to fully reproduce, the importance of forests and dark skies to our psychospiritual well-being, where modern Western festival culture fails in its declared goal of delivering us back into right relations and ecstatic harmony with our kosmos…plus much else.Read the ✨ EXTENSIVE ✨ show notes, and join the Future Fossils community, at Patreon.Rate and review the show at Apple PodcastsBrowse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, NFTs, etc.✨ Side Note:My big, BIG thanks to everyone for being so patient with me while my family and I suffered through some extraordinary challenges over the last months. I can’t tell you enough how much it means to me to have retained nearly everyone’s Patreon support while my wife and I dealt with two constantly sick kids, a number of our own health issues, and major upgrades to our home and big transitions at work.The good news is that I also managed to record interviews with the legendary Simon Conway Morris and Robert Poynton in that time and will be sharing those with you in short order! So, again, thanks for your subscriptions, your glowing Apple Podcasts reviews, and your engagement in the Future Fossils Facebook group…and stay tuned for several exciting big announcements soon!(Big thanks to my father-in-law Kevin Taylor for helping edit this episode!) Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 kata "down" (see cata-). The second element is traced either to arhattein "to strike hard" (in which case the compound is kat-arrhattein), or to rhattein "to dash, break." Its alternative sense in Latin of "portcullis" probably passed through French and gave English the meaning "eye disease characterized by opacity of the lens" (early 15c.), on the notion of "obstruction" (to eyesight). (from etymology.com)Episode Art & Music:Aldebaran by Michael Garfield (2020) (prints available)Pavo: Music for Mystery by Michael Garfield (2017)Other Ways To Support:• linktr.ee/michaelgarfield will take you to a trove of art and music• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• ETH: FutureFossils.eth• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe wherever you dig podcastsRate and review the show at Apple PodcastsBrowse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, NFTs, etc.Dig into the complete, extensive show notes (and join our online community) at PatreonThis 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 of international collective intelligence projects, and generally fascinating person. In a conversation that already feels somewhat archaeological (it was recorded in November 2021 and references discussions that have already developed significantly over the last year), we explore the martial art of living in transition, of thriving in the in-between spaces, of dealing with the unpredictable and the fundamental uncertainty of our lives. We also rap on the subjects of innovation, global weirding, organizational evolution, technology, hope, and happiness. Dig into the complete show notes for plenty to follow up on!Intro and outro music is from my forthcoming EP, “Ephemeropolis,” available soon at Bandcamp and Patreon.Special thanks to Tami Pudina for her help with this episode! Check out her work at hyperdriveanthropology.com. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Rate and review the show at Apple PodcastsDig into the complete, extensive show notes at PatreonThis 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 Indigenous peoples, and applies her scientific research to questions of astrobiology: the search for life and intelligence in outer space.In this episode, we discuss the life/non-life boundary, evolution as thermodynamics, anaerobic microbes as the invisible labor supporting all life on Earth, the origin of life: in the light, or in the dark?, the wonderful world of -omics, individual vs. Institutional agency and the necessary revolution of consciousness required for effective collective action at planetary scale, power and responsibility, best practices for working with the Indigenous as a scientist, stepping up to biospheric stewardship, and practicing right relations across scales (not just micro-macro but also across space and time).Special thanks to Tami Pudina for her help with editing this episode! Check out her work at hyperdriveanthropology.com. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 ambivalent about the contours of the futures he and his colleagues were making visible with their rigorous research. This spirit has defined my entire adult life: if you want to help steer something in a better direction, you might just have to get your hands down into the murk and engage with it deeply enough to be in the position to make a difference. So when his agent contacted me about interviewing him about his latest book, 2021’s Move: The Forces Uprooting Us, I knew it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. But let me be clear that Parag sees things very differently than I do, and I appreciate that about him: he has a keen sense of the risks and dangers of our times but emphasizes the opportunities because the facts are there to support it. If you move around as much as he does, and always has, you get a kind of synoptic view of the planet and the tension between individual destiny and collective momentum comes into a new tuning. This is a beast of a conversation. It was hell to edit. I’m glad it happened. Here you go!Complete, extensive show notes at Patreon.✨ Housekeeping:• Intro music is "You're In My Self-Portrait" from my 2012 album Golden Hour. Outro music is "City of Jewels" from my 2013 EP of the same name. For something completely different, check out my latest live album, recorded at Meow Wolf Santa Fe while opening for DeVotchKa.✨ Other Ways To Support The Work & Community:• My roughly-monthly newsletter at Substack• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• ETH: FutureFossils.eth• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice | Hic Et Nunc | Mint Songs Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Complete, 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 could have anticipated.The United States Supreme Court has failed the great majority of American citizens not just once but several shocking and historic times in one week, hacking away at women’s reproductive rights, the EPA, and gun safety all at once. The Supreme Court majority was largely appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote, our nation is embroiled in hearings about a violent coup attempt spearheaded by the former President, and people on both sides of the constructed political divide seem more desperate than ever before in living memory. At the same time, both stocks and digital currencies, and the economic possibilities they support, are suffering through what seems like it will be a protracted winter. So it’s a PERFECT moment to talk about the visions we commit to building through the hardship, and the new responsibilities we must assume as citizens — not just of nation-states, but of the digital communities and cultures that we voluntarily participate in, the neighborhoods and cities that we live in. When a big tree dies in the forest, its falling lets in light that stimulates a contest between saplings — and we’re seeing something similar now in this rapid blooming of experiments in governance and finance, legal regulations and privately-organized society. Suddenly projects like the CABIN DAO seem prescient and urgent, so I’m glad to share this potent conversation with Jon Hillis and @0xZakk of CABIN DAO and Christian Lemp of Diamond DAO — three of the many people working hard at the frontiers of blockchain-based social innovation. In this episode we talk about what it means to live-action roleplay as a city-state, how physical geography and online culture overlap in their experiments, and what should stay illegible and wild amidst this wave of techy change…If you enjoy this show, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you prefer to listen. I’ve been extremely busy backstage working on a suite of Future Fossils projects that extend beyond the podcast, some of which you can glimpse on my Instagram and Twitter feeds…big changes coming soon, and inspiration’s flowing. If you want the inner track on all the music, art, and writing I am cooking up — or if you simply see the value in these conversations and my work at large, I hope you’ll join the other awesome people chipping in with listener support at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield — where I’m sharing an enormous folder of new A.I. artwork, updated every day.Lastly, I just re-launched my now thirteen-year-old blog on Substack — for roughly monthly digests of new work, join 7,500 other readers at michaelgarfield.substack.com. More soon. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Find 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 communicate and share information without unreasonable constraint — as well as the fundamental right to explore, tinker, create, and innovate along the frontier of emerging technologies. In this episode, I talk with Kevin Welch and David Hensley about why digital rights matter to our analog lives; whether and how the genies of rampant technological innovation can be forced back into the bottle; how to think about the inherent tensions between individuals and institutions; what esoteric traditions and superhero movies may have to teach us about living in the 21st century, and considerably more. I also make entirely too many references to Michael Crichton novels.I’ve collaborated with EFF-Austin on previous episodes of Future Fossils you may also enjoy:33 - Jon Lebkowsky (Pluralist Utopias & The World Wide Web's Wild West)92 - Panel: The Pre- and Post-History of VR, Surveillance, and Swarm IntelligenceAgain, Patreon is really the place you want to be checking out the resources for this show (and, of course, it's the place to go to take a shower in the awesome stuff I reserve for supporters). Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

or, “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 don’t have peers?”– Brenda Dunne“The culture of science, at its purest, is one of freedom in which any idea can be tested regardless of how far-fetched it might seem.”– Benedict Carey, writing on the PEAR Lab for The New York TimesFull show notes available at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Don'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 of loosely-associated "sensemakers," "meta-theorists," and "systems poets" into well-meaning but ultimately dubious cultural taxonomies.I had plenty to say about this (here, here, and here) from my awkwardly consistent stance of being both enthusiastic and skeptical about apparently everything. But so did numerous other brilliant and inspiring people, including Bonnitta Roy, Stephanie Lepp, Ashley Colby, and Jason Snyder – all of whom I've wanted on the show for a while (with the exception of Stephanie, with whom I had a great chat back on episode 154). So I took it upon myself to press for an on-the-record group discussion about the virtue and folly of putting labels on sociocultural processes and networks that are defined by their liminality: Is this ultimately a good thing, or does it just kill the magic in a foolish servility to economic pressures and the desire to be recognized as A Movement?When we finally met at the end of March for our call, the conversation turned to issues with more urgency and gravitas — namely: Is it even helpful to spend all of our time talking about crises and metacrises when there is so much work to be done?What transpired was easily one of the more profound and inspired conversations I've ever had the good fortune to host on this show, although it was also more beset with insane and infuriating technical problems that getting it ready for release took over thirty hours of excruciating editing. I am so immensely glad I am finally done and can get on with my damn life! But also that I get to share this with you and hear what the rest of our scene(s) have to contribute to this discourse. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

I 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 together sharing stories about paleontologists, talking music, gabbing about our love of science fiction, and being ridiculous.I've decided to not bother editing this one because (1) I'm finally getting bold enough to give not-editing a shot; and (2) it was SO VERY ENJOYABLE that I am not sure I could survive a second listen without a second conversation already on the calendar. Consequently, you don't get the normal intensely-detailed show notes, but among the many things we discusses are: synthesizers; feathered dinosaurs; symbiosis as the defining feature of the future of the biosphere; the relationship between good science and good science fiction; why Olaf Stapledon is one of the most important sci-fi authors of the 20th Century; and as I've already said, much else.Visit the episode page on Patreon for a heap of related episodes if this one lights a fire in your mind...✨ Housekeeping• If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra podcasts each month, book club calls, early access to new writing, art, and music, and special access to our exclusive (and very active) Facebook group and Discord server.• Find and obtain all the books we discuss on this show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.• When you’d rather listen to music, follow me on Bandcamp and (if you must) Spotify. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Find 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 through slave work songs and Beat poetry into the age of the mythic rockstar through the definitive contributions of acts such as Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder, and with inspiration from The Merry Pranksters, Walt Whitman, and many more.This is the story of the cultural air we're all breathing and taking for granted. As a lifelong disciple of songwriting and poetry, I DEVOURED this book and this DELIGHTED in this conversation; and in the tense atmosphere of current events I can't think of a better way to emphasize what makes life worth living and what beauty grows from hardship than by turning our focus to the fruits of human creativity across and between cultures. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Microbiologist, 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 give it a listen…Learn more about and register for Siv's 2022 course on Thinking Like A Plague.Find the complete, extensive show notes — and support the show for superb extras — on Patreon. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Get 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 and fighting the entropic onslaught of externality production? We take it back to the middle of the 20th Century to find out: from kid gangs in the DC Beltway to MIT to writing computer models of the atmosphere of Jupiter, car salesman and college textbook peddler, suddenly we’re talking about building planet-wide networks of gravity wave detection telescopes and mutually non-commensurable village sex cults? Rivalry and non-rivalry in companies and governance. Holocracy and sociocracy. Are we prophets or fools? Or perhaps more importantly, How do you steal back the train from GameA? The code is simple: intellectual honesty and “a war on politics”. I had a blast talking with Jim and hope you have as much fun listening. Can’t wait to hear what conversations come from this…Yours in systems poetry,Michael Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 value of discussions like these lies in the tension between perspectives, and the intertidal zone is fertile, here, indeed.You can watch the unedited panel recording on YouTube (but I recommend listening instead, as the work that went into editing this was immense).For the COMPLETE show notes, including copious additional learning resources, find this episode on Patreon.More About Our Guests:Park BachRESEARCHER AT FIGMENT.IO; LIBRARIAN AT GITCOINCoordination Problems • Initial Conditions • Emergent Intent • Group PrioritySiddhant ShrivastavaRESEARCHER AT SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN’S iTRUST CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN CYBER SECURITYCyber-physical Systems Security • Extended Reality • Distributed Teams • Workforce Training • TeleroboticsAvel Guénin-CarlutFOUNDER AT KAIROS RESEARCH; RESEARCH COORDINATOR AT ACTIVE INFERENCE LABPhysics of Life • Cultural Evolution • Epistemology • Active Inference • Consciousness Shirley Bekins, MPAINDEPENDENT WRITER AND RESEARCHERSystems Feedbacks • Path Dependence • Poverty • Homelessness Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 the communicator, the “flaveregore”, a speculative science dao that can and will fund taboo research, how the street finds its own uses for things, time binding and prediction and tarot and algorithmic policing, the divine value of boredom, and more.Scout on Twitter | FacebookFind the COMPLETE show notes for this episode here.✨ Housekeeping• If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra podcasts each month, book club calls, and early access to new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have awesome conversations in our Discord Server & Facebook Group, which is going to convert to patrons-only in January 2022.• When you’d rather listen to music, follow me on Bandcamp or Spotify. (Here are my listening recommendations.)✨ Music by Michael Garfield• “Transparent,” “Always Catching Up,” “You Don’t Have To Move,” “Life Finds A Way,” “Hyperstition” from The Age of Reunion✨ Other ways to support the work that goes into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice | Hic Et Nunc | Mint Songs Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

The 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 a patron you get extra podcasts each month, book club calls, and early access to new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have awesome conversations in our Discord Server & Facebook Group, which is going to convert to patrons-only in January 2022.• When you’d rather listen to music, follow me on Bandcamp or Spotify. (Here are my listening recommendations.)✨ Music & Art by Michael Garfield• Intro music from the Martian Arts EP. • Outro music: "Seeing Like A State" available soon to Patreon and Bandcamp supporters.✨ Other ways to support the work that goes into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice | Hic Et Nunc | Mint Songs Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Last 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 here. Hope you can join us!Dig into the complete show notes for this episode on Patreon. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 for the innovation of new language, and the urgency of helping people reconnect to the sacred wilderness that ecodelics reveal is not simply “outside.” It's brief but glorious.If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and leave a good review on Apple Podcasts!Dig up the full show notes at https://www.patreon.com/posts/58002643/. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 to be one of my favorites yet. Get ready to unravel what you think you know about the ways you come to your decisions, allocate your trust, and sort the chaos of experience…Due to some inexplicable technical nonsense I can't add the full liner notes here, so please find extensive additional resources (including all of the papers, books, and podcasts we mention) at Patreon (where, by the way, your membership grants you extra podcasts each month, book club calls, and early access to new writing, art, and music).✨ Support the work that goes into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice✨ Music by Skytree“Navigator” & “Silmaril” off Infraplanetary Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 good and evil.In part two, available to Patreon supporters later this week, we talk about Evan’s work to reconstruct the soundscapes of The Age of Dinosaurs, his experiments with using radioactive mineral samples to control modular synthesizers, and his reflections on the use of sound for deep-time communication with future humans and/or extraterrestrials…✨ Go Deeper• If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra episodes each month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group.• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org.• For when you’d rather listen to music, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Related Reading• Set My Heart To Five by Simon Stephenson• Unfettered Journey by Gary Bengier• Alex & Ada by Jonathan Luna & Sarah Vaughn• The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule The Earth by Robin Hanson• “Smooth Operator: Tuning Robot Perception Through Artificial Movement Sound” by Frederic Anthony Robinson, Mari Velonaki, Oliver Bown• “The maintenance of vocal learning by gene–culture interaction: the cultural trap hypothesis” by Robert F. Lachlan and Peter J. B. Slater✨ Related Listening• FF 13 - Rupert Till on Ancient Audio & Future Ritual• FF 29 - Sara Huntley on Raising Robots Right• FF 53 - Evan Snyder on A Very Xeno Christmas!• FF 73 - Patricia Gray on BioMusic, The New Science of Our Musical Brains & Biosphere• FF 149 - Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, Naomi Most on Cultural Somatics & Ritual as Justice• FF 159 - Michael Dowd on Post Doom: Life After Accepting Climate Catastrophe✨ Music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder• “Telomere,” “Minas Gracia,” and “Sanitas” off Infraplanetary✨ Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice (available to non-crypto users) Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 the worst parts of psychedelic capitalism.Learn more about Daniel at tamintegration.com, sitaramdas.com, Instagram, and Twitter.Get 10% off your ticket for the The Third Annual Psilocybin Summit (16-20 September 2021) and enjoy my live Future Fossils panel with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy — as well as presentations by dozens of other amazing contributors — at psilocybinsummit.com/garfield.✨ Housekeeping• If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra episodes each month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org• For when you’d rather listen to music, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Related Reading• “What the heck happened to Reality Sandwich?” by Faye Sakelladaris• Thread on suffering and coping strategies on my Facebook timeline• Thread on lateral thinking & creativity in the Future Fossils Facebook group✨ Related Listening• FF 58 - Shane Mauss on Psychonautic Adventures at The Edge of Genius and Madness• FF 63 - David Bronner on Psychedelics, Activism, and Trans-foam-ation• FF 88 - Dennis McKenna on Psychedelics as Scientific Instruments• FF 103 - Tricia Eastman on Facilitating Psychedelic Journeys to Recover from An Age of Epidemic Trauma• FF 112 - Mitsuaki Chi on Serving The Mushroom• FF 156 - Stuart Davis on Zen, Aliens, and Psychedelics• SolPurpose Conversations 2 - Richard Doyle on The Cloud of Unknowing• MG and Saj Razvi on MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy at BDYHAX 2018✨ Music by Michael Garfield• “Whispering At Night” & “Autonomous Zone” off House Ship On A Hill (2021)• “Tin Heart” off Double-Edged Sword (2007)✨ Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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 inhabits an awesome position at the intersection of Indigenous knowledge systems, complexity science, cultural criticism, multimedia art and design, and dreaming and scheming on applications for ancient wisdom in the digital and post-digital eras.Check out the EXTENSIVE full liner notes at Patreon, where you can also support the show for extra episodes each month, invites to our book & film club, and new writing, art, and music. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This 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, how culture is a tesseract and dreams are future fossils, the controversy of divinatory astrology, and how pre-shocks of future traumas explain some of the more puzzling facts of history.✨ Housekeeping:If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get two extra episodes a month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org• Intro music: “Olympus Mons” by Michael Garfield | Outro music: “Otolith” by Skytree• For when you’d rather listen to music than conversation, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.• Thanks to Naomi Most for helping edit the first half of this episode! It isn’t easy work.If you like thinking about mind-expanding future technologies, I recommend you check out David Kelley’s WeFunder for a new human-AI symbiosis governance system that seems like it could shake things up in a good way. If you know people who like to fund tech projects, this one seems worth checking out. (David’s Transhumanity.net is a supporter of the show.)✨ Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation✨ Discussed:• ListeningFF 117 with Eric WargoFF 124 with Norman “Dr. Blue” KatzFF 150 with Sean Esbjörn-HargensFF 156 with Stuart DavisComplexity Episode 9 with Mirta Galesic• ReadingNPR - Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers SayNautilus - This Tenet Shows Time Travel May Be PossibleJohnjoe McFadden - Quantum EvolutionJonathan Zap - Crossing The Event HorizonJacques Vallee - The Invisible CollegeTed Chiang - Stories of your Life and OthersTed Chiang - ExhalationKurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse FiveTimothy Morton - HyperobjectsRussell Targ & Jean Houston - Limitless MindJessica Flack - “Coarse-Graining as a Downward Causation Mechanism”✨ Affiliate Links:• I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help edit transcripts for the Future Fossils book project, please email or DM me: Email | Twitter | Instagram)• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my new single. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is a true return to form, in which my old friend Michael Jacobs (aka The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo, aka Void Denizen) and I talk about pretty much everything — including plenty of things I honestly can’t believe I spoke about so freely.Every once in a rare while I have a discussion on Future Fossils that truly exemplifies the spirit in which this show was born — the truly omnivorous amateur enthusiasm that pervaded it before I started worrying about defining these investigations for an audience.Here is just a set of sampling slices from our most heartfelt and epic yarn, in which Michael talks about taking care of his father, who suffers Alzheimer’s; about getting back out of city life and onto the road in the American Southwest, communing with the landscape; about nonduality and artistry and memory and transpersonal somatics and their implications…It is an honor to meld with this guy, especially as my first not-exactly-post-pandemic, back-in-person podcast with a friend in the same room since God Knows When. Throughout this episode: he and I bat 1000 on the revelatory portmanteaus:The IcarOS, Genre Fluid, Vagabondage, The Industry and The Artistry, (my Dantien used to be a) Dantwienty, (and of course) The Transtempouroboros (tasty!).✨ Housekeeping:Come out as a future fossil on Patreon for another 25 minutes of this awesome conversation, plus two extra episodes a month, invites to our book club, new weird inspired essays, art and music that I labor on late night sometimes for months, and other things that help me share the wondrous inquiry. And please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts!• Discord Server | Facebook Group(Where people go to be weird enough to make it.)• Bookshop.org Future Fossils Reading List(Buy the books we talk about. You support local booksellers and I get a cut. Bezos gets nothing.)Episode edited by this tired guy right here. Theme music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder. For when you’d rather listen to music than conversation, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Discussed:“If time is circular, you can be behind the curve and ahead of the curve at the same time.”– MG[Topics]Life transformations; place-based spirituality; the praxis, challenge, and path of caregiving; knowing when it’s time to shake things up; time, loss, memory, the shedding of ego…realizing you’ve been forgotten; Improv vs. composition; genii loci; when the doer and the doing are the same; time travel in the music studio; the difference between emphasis on UFO craft or the aliens themselves; scrutinizing my UFO experiences as potentially “just” a social hallucinogenic placebo effect or accidental transpersonal charismatic gaslighting…[Listening]Michaelangelo on FF: 37, 101Bayo Akomolafe on Rune SoupSelf Portraits As Other People Episode 1 with LogaReincantations (theme of The Sentimental Centipede)Anthony Peake on Self Portraits As Other PeopleShea Hembrey at TED: How I Became 100 ArtistsJF Martel on FF: 18, 71, 126FF 150 on a Unifying Meta-Theory of UFOs and The WeirdMG on Aliens and ArtistsOn Dreams and Waking at the San Francisco Evolver Spore, April 2010FF 149 with Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, Naomi Most, Onyx AshantiFF 117 with Eric Wargo[Other People]Void Denizen, Stewart Brand, EOTO, Tyson Yunkaporta, Jeff Buckley, David Bowie, Ween, Mike Patton, Yeasayer, Ben Harper, Bo Burnham, eter and The Wolf[Reading]Michaelangelo’s Meowsoleum and new book, The He and She of ItMG’s The Evolution of Surveillance, Part 4: Augments and AmputeesMartin Nowak et al.’s The evolution of syntactic communication (paper)“Time binding” was coined by Alfred Horzybski (who also said, “The map is not the territory.”)Rolf Potts’ VagabondingDavid Eagleman’s SumArthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other DaysPola Olaixarac’s Dark ConstellationsDavid Abram, Becoming AnimalJohn C. Wright’s Count To A Trillion and The Golden AgePeter Watts’ BlindsightKurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse FiveAldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell[Viewing]Westworld, Constantine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Altered Carbon, Coco, Seven Pounds (re: organ transplants),Dark Crystal & Labyrinth (re: Brian Froud),Lucy with Scarlett Johannson (re: black goo),Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase✨ Products I Endorse:• I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help edit transcripts for the Future Fossils book project, please email or DM me: Email | Twitter | Instagram)• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and whi

This week we talk to Leidy Klotz about his book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less.Leidy Klotz is an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia in the Schools of Engineering, Architecture, and Business. His wide-ranging, prolific, and highly-awarded research is filling in unexplored overlaps between design and behavioral science. Nationally recognized as one of 40-under-40 professors who inspire, Leidy has taught thousands of students, including 21 Ph.D. advisees, whose designing and teaching shapes the world. He founded and directs the Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative, which brings together scholars, funders, media, and practitioners to advance behavioral science for design.We discuss the human cognitive bias to try and solve a problem by adding new elements rather than by subtracting pieces from the problem; how deeply-rooted and pernicious this is in both our evolution and our economics, and how it has contributed to the complex and compounding crises in which we find ourselves today; the implications of subtraction thinking for civil engineering, governance and collective behavior; how to communicate a subtraction strategy as a net positive without setting off people’s loss aversion alarms; whether it’s possible to “subtract” systemic racism and other structural inequalities; and in what ways the evolution of the technosphere will make for future humans both more and less than we are…https://www.leidyklotz.com/If you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! Patrons can gain access to two extra episodes a month, our monthly book club, new art and music, and other wondrous things.• Join the Future Fossils Discord Server and/or Facebook Group• Buy the books we talk about while supporting local booksellers and the podcastRelated Reading & Notes:Edward Tufte - PowerPoint is Evilhttps://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HO_SNOW_2014_PowerPoint-Is-Evil.pdfNPR - To Save The Science Poster, Researchers Want To Kill It And Start Overhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/11/729314248/to-save-the-science-poster-researchers-want-to-kill-it-and-start-overMartin Nowak, Joshua Plotkin, Vincent A. A. Jansen - The evolution of syntactic communicationhttps://www.nature.com/articles/35006635Things:optimizationsatisficingcomplex systemstrafficcognitioninteroperabilitydaylightingscience communicationpersuasionParkinson’s LawJevons’ ParadoxhoardingdeclutteringpollutionThe Anthropoceneurban designlandscape architectureentropydefund the policeinformation designthe non-euclidean curved attention landscapePeople:Joseph LeidyAndrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New WorldGeorge Lakoff & Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live byBrian Eno / The Long Now FoundationDaniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and SlowSystems researcher Tim ClancyKate Orff’s Toward an Urban Ecology: SCAPE / LandscapeMarie KondoTyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The WorldRajiv Sethi & Brendan Flaherty’s Shadow of DoubtHunter MaatsAnn BlairHerbert SimonKirell BenziRichard Doyle’s Darwin’s PharmacyChris Ryan’s Civilized To DeathPierre Teilhard de ChardinMihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s FlowMichael PhillipsAffiliate Links:I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help me edit transcripts for my upcoming Future Fossils book project, please let me know! I’m @michaelgarfield on Twitter & Instagram.)BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me restore the face I had before 15 months of COVID-19 burnout.If you’re looking for new ways to help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, let me recommend the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and appreciate it so much I decided to join their affiliate program. The science is solid.And for musicians in the audience, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine and you can hear it all over my new single.When you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.Program Info:Episode mostly edited by my amazing wife, Nicole Taylor.Theme music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder. Intro bed music by Michael Garfield.Cover Image c/o Jad Limcaco/Unsplash.Support this show financially:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futu

If you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! Patrons gain access to a secret feed of biweekly episodes, unreleased music, our monthly book club, and many other wondrous things. And join us in the Discord!This week I talk with Mikey Lion, music producer and co-founder of Desert Hearts, and Malena Grosz, creator of The Party Pro Toolkit and director of Stargate Reunion, about the pandemic’s distortions of time and community, flow states and festival time, gatherings in the No New Normal, running a festival and record label at the same time, comparing the potentials of festivals and urban nightlife, the impact of stage design and architecture on how community events shape individual experience, the tension between intimacy and scale, my hatred of silent disco and multiple simultaneous competing sound systems, DMT and other life-changing experiences, the good parts of tribalism, psychedelic integration.We start talking about the initiatic inspirations for both of them as festival producers…and then things get weird. And beautiful and raw and real and intimate — surprisingly, intensely so. Mikey talks about a very bad trip and we help him integrate it. We aim to close with two questions: What would you tell people in the future if they had forgotten how to party? And what, if they’re better at partying than we are, would you want to ask them?But then we get to talking about the future of festival economics…Mikey Lion: Spotify | SoundCloud | Facebook | Instagram | TwitterDesert Hearts: Spotify | SoundCloud | Facebook | Instagram | TwitterMalena Grosz: Party Pro Toolkit | Future Fossils 96 | LinkedIn | Twitter | FacebookFrom the press release for Mikey’s new LP, For The Love:“Before nurturing his brand and record label into the behemoth that it is today, a young Mikey Lion had been living with his parents and questioning the direction to take his life. Mesmeric album closer ‘Talking To The Trees’ with its lush synth layers and gossamer vocals, sketches out how his path was revealed to him. During a fateful psychedelic trip, he was guided to spread love and community under the banner of House, Techno, and Love that fans know today. Desert Hearts was officially launched in 2012, and the rest is history."Support this show financially:• Shop my Bookshop.org reading lists and I get a cut of all the sales from local booksellers• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | FoundationPeople & Topics in this episode:Malena Grosz, Peter Dodds, George Carlin, Burning Man, Coachella, UtopiaFest, Firefly Gathering, Stuart Davis, Aliens and Artists, Topher Sipes, Trinumeral Festival, The War of ArtRelated episodes:David Bronner, Shane Mauss, The Teafaerie, Lydia Violet, Tricia Eastman, Rak Razam and Niles Heckman, Dennis McKenna, Jessica Nielson and Link Swanson Program Info:Episode edited by my amazing wife, Nicole Taylor. (It’s even more amazing that she did this when you listen to me divulge our relationship on the show…)Theme music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. If you’d like to help me edit transcripts for my upcoming Future Fossils book project, please let me know! I’m @michaelgarfield on Twitter & Instagram.Affiliate Stuff:If you’re looking for new ways to help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, let me recommend the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and appreciate it so much I decided to join their affiliate program. The science is solid.And for my fellow guitarists in the audience, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I just grabbed one this year and LOVE it.When you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk with Robert C. Jacobson, entrepreneur and space industry enabler, advocate, and investor. Jacobson is the founder of Space Advisors, a strategic and financial consulting firm for space startups and organizations looking to establish a space strategy. He also works at the Arch Mission Foundation, which is dedicated to creating civilizational backup libraries, and Space Angels, the world’s first space-focused angel investment group. His new book is Space Is Open for Business: The Industry That Can Transform Humanity (sample it | buy the hardcover).In this episode, we discuss the bright and dark sides of the emerging space industry — from the inspirational and unifying 1970s visions of Gerard O’Neill to the 2020s’ clash of barons, SpaceX vs. Blue Origin, and the challenges of regulation in a space of blindingly fast innovation and massive inequality. If you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our monthly book club, and many other wondrous things.Robert Jacobson’s Website | Space Advisors | Twitter | FacebookSupport this show financially:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | FoundationPeople & Topics in this episode (links go to Future Fossils episodes or my Bookshop storefront):Gerard O’Neill’s The High Frontier, John David Ebert, Mark Nelson, Armin Ellis, Tanya Harrison, Elon Musk, Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Geoffrey West, Annalee Newitz, Divya Persaud, Bob May, Jeff Bezos, W. Brian Arthur, Space Force, Arch Mission Foundation, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (Red, Green, Blue), Robert Zubrin’s The Case For Mars, Robert David Steele, Greg Egan’s DistressFermi’s Paradox, Space Anarchy, Frontierism, Civilizational Backups, The Not Insignificant Ethical Issue of Unchecked Mega-Billionaires, Space Isn’t Hospitable, Space Debris & The Tragedy of The Commons, Scaling Laws & Path Dependencies, Can We Make It To Space Before We Eat Ourselves?, Interdisciplinary Innovation vs. Institutional Incumbents & Inhibitory Structure, Space Is For ArtistsOther related FF episodes: Kate Greene, Barry Vacker, Jessa GambleProgram Info:Music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. If you’d like to help me edit transcripts for my upcoming Future Fossils book project, please let me know! I’m @michaelgarfield on Twitter & Instagram.If you’re looking for new ways to help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, let me recommend the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and appreciate it so much I decided to join their affiliate program. The science is solid.And for my fellow guitarists in the audience, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I just grabbed one this year and LOVE it.When you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week we’re joined by Anna Riedl, a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum and organizer at Effective Altruism Austria, currently studying Cognitive Science at Universität Wien. We discuss behavioral economics, bounded rationality, computational rationality, and other formal ways of thinking about how to do the most good, given great uncertainty about most things. We ask whether “cognitive biases” are really fairly understood as biases when they’re the result of a rational learning process, we explore links to the quantified self, and we advocate for epistemic humility — and the need, no matter our incomplete understanding, to nonetheless still Do Something…If you agree this show should thrive, become a Patreon supporter and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! You can also buy the books I talk about from indie stores at bookshop.org/shop/futurefossils.Other Links:Anna on FB: “Rationality ≠ Rationalism”Anna’s Cognitive Science MapEffective Altruism AustriaEffective Altruism Redbubble Design Shop80,000 Hours: Key IdeasGapminder.orgFuture of Humanity InstituteI transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. To help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, let me recommend the Apollo Neuro. And for my fellow guitarists in the audience, check out the Jamstik Studio. Those are the three products I feel comfortable shilling with affiliate links at the moment.Official show music by original co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder. For more vibes, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.Currency is better when it’s kept in motion:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xddF0524510d6d802c3e9b0740D48CF893425664D Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe