Humans On The Loop

“The most expensive part of making this book was time. I spent my time, which is my scarcest resource. For every one of the nearly 9,000 images in this book, I was standing directly behind the camera. I had to get there. It’s not just a long way from the US to Asia, it was usually a long way from the airport to the local town in the countryside. And then it took time to reach the right village. And then it took time to find the ceremony. And then I would have to wait. Then wait some more. More than money, or photons, this book is made from time.”“Our religion, which is the religion of quantification and measurement” has transformed the world. This week on Future Fossils, we talk to Kevin Kelly about his three-volume photojournal Vanishing Asia, a style archive collected over 50 years and countless miles, winnowed down from 200,000 pictures.We talk about what it is to remember, to preserve, to capture, to restore, to reimagine… Preservation bias in the archaeological history of technology,Cosmology and religion, the evolution of culture and faith in modernity,What kinds of value the economy is capable of capturing or even seeing, and what kinds it’s not capable of capturing,Ecosystem services and other invisible labor,When externalities are people,How long memories can make systems stubborn,How to optimize forgetting so as to be a good ancestor leaving more degrees of freedom,What makes an explanation good enough,The future of Asia and thus the world…Yeah, we squeeze a lot into 45 minutes.Pairs Well With:Future Fossils 128 - Kevin Kelly on Evolving with TechnologyComplexity 55 - James Evans on Social Computing and Diversity By DesignIf 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.Music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.I'm slowly turning this podcast into a book, with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. If you’d like to edit transcripts, 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’m using it in the studio right now.When you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.• 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

This week we talk to artist, musician, and community organizer Violet Luxton, who works and lives at the intersection of Indigenous wisdom traditions and Indigenous rights movements, #LandBack and #BlackLivesMatter, afro-futurism, yoga, and visionary biotechnological speculation. In a conversation far shorter than the subject matter deserves, we explore some of the themes in and related to her profound academic paper, "Transtemporality and The Technology of Indigenous Kinship: The Science of Remembering Ourselves."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.Music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.Enjoy, and thanks for listening!_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_Also Discussed In This Episode:Violet Luxton at LinkedInSaki Mafundikwa — Ingenuity and Elegance in Ancient African Alphabets [video]Ron Eglash — The Fractals at The Heart of African Designs [video]_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_Additional Resources:Buy the books we mention on Future Fossils at Bookshop.org/shop/FutureFossils, which supports local bookstores instead of Amazon and pays me 10% at no additional cost to you.When you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.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. Videos soon!• 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

This week we’re joined by evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers and Bitcoin entrepreneur Brandon Quittem for an interdisciplinary trialogue on the analogy between digital currencies and the so-called Wood Wide Web. Toby studies fungal economies in the lab, and her research challenges the commonly-held assumption that mycorrhizal networks are socialist utopia hippie love-fests. Brandon evangelizes “The Internet of Money” as an exemplary instance of biomimicry and argues that Bitcoin is doing for human finance what mycelial networks have done for terrestrial biology. And I wade in with more than my usual helping of paradoxically-critical enthusiasm to ask if “natural” really equals “healthy” or “desirable” in our rush to serve the evolutionary algorithm of technological development. This one should appeal to anybody on the “Transhumanist Bitcoin Bro to Luddite Biodynamic Farmer” spectrum…share your thoughts about the episode in ourFuture Fossils Discord server or Facebook group, where it’s easy to link up with amazing fellow weirdos.Brandon’s Website & TwitterBrandon’s article, “Bitcoin is The Mycelium of Money”Toby’s Website & TwitterToby’s TED talk, “Lessons from fungi on markets and economics”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.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. Videos soon!Enjoy, and thanks for listening!Additional Resources:Future Fossils 161 - Michael Phillip on Play & CreativityFuture Fossils 81 - Art Brock on Holochain and the Future of CurrencyFuture Fossils 56 - Sophia Rohklin on Anarchy, Ecology, Economy, and ShamanismComplexity 35 - Geoffrey West on Physical Scaling LawsComplexity 13 - Brian Arthur on the History of Complexity EconomicsComplexity 8 - Olivia Judson on Life’s Major Energy TransitionsDeep Facebook thread on the un/sustainability of blockchains & cryptocurrenciesRegen NetworkWhen you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.And if you're in a tipping mood:• 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

This week, I embark on a new experiment and respond to three "advice column" questions from the Future Fossils listening audience:• How do I know if aliens would like my music?• How do I talk to my five-year-old about death?• How do I be creative without training or experience?This was a lot of fun and I'll definitely do this again. Enjoy, and thanks for listening!Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other great things as they spill out of my overactive imagination.We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’d like to edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, please drop me a line at futurefossilspodcast[at]gmail.com.)Show theme music is by original Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.Further Resources:IntroEpisode 70 with Steve Brusatte on the Golden Age of Dinosaurs Episode 100 with The Teafaerie Episode 158 with The Teafaerie & Ramin Nazer Episode 117 with Eric Wargo on Time Loops How do I know if aliens would like my music?Eight Two Music Complexity Podcast 1 with David Krakauer Hook (film) 1991Episode 161 with Michael Phillip on Creativity, Play, and Cryptocurrency Weird Studies 75 on 2001: A Space Odyssey Southpark Season 23 Episode 2 ("Band In China") Complexity 41 with Natalie Grefenstette on Agnostic Biosignature DetectionThe Physical Limits of Communication (1999) Edward Snowden talks with Neil DeGrasse Tyson about aliens Episode 42 with William Irwin ThompsonSFI Musicology & Complex Systems Working Group (YouTube Playlist)Episode 125 with Stuart Kauffman on Evolution & The Adjacent PossibleKing Kong (film) 1933How do I talk to my five-year-old about death?The New York Times: 10 Annoying Kids' Toys Complexity 52 with Mark Moffett on Canopy Biology & The Human Swarm Episode 116 with Kevin Wohlmut reading Ugo Bardi & John Michael Greer The Lion King (film) 1994 Complexity 37 with Laurence Gonzales on Surviving SurvivalThe Future Acts Like You The Addams Family (film) 1991How do I be creative without training?Alicia Eggert's Stewart Brand artwork at The Smithsonian The Exaptation of the Guitar The Future is Exapted/Remixed "You're only as original as the obscurity of your sources" And when you’re ready to switch it up, here are my music and listening recommendations on Spotify.If you're in a tipping mood:• 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

This week I talk play, innovation, noise, disruption, cryptocurrency, and trickster creativity with Michael Phillip, host of sister podcast Third Eye Drops, which I’m on A LOT – episodes 102, 88, 58, 44 with Doug Rushkoff, 38 with Niles Heckman, 28 with Bruce Damer, 21 with Erik Davis, 9 with Shane Mauss, 4 with Erik Davis, and this special mashup episode. This one was originally recorded as Third Eye Drops Episode 239, but I went ahead and painstakingly edited out over ten minutes of filler language and head-scratching to give you the sharpest and most-polished conversation possible. If you appreciate these conversations and the extra work I put in to make them shine, please support Future Fossils on Patreon! You'll find the full, extensive show notes for this episode there. 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

It’s time for humankind to grow up — but it might also be more important than ever that we reconnect with our inner children and play like our lives depend on it (because they do). And so, given the in-progress BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s masterful fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, it feels like a great time to talk about this coming-of-age story and its cosmological questions. This week on Future Fossils, we link up with my friends Stephen Hershey and Kynthia Brunette, whose perspectives from acting and the study of human-computer interaction, as well as their deep fanship of Pullman’s writing, add up to a refreshingly fun and casual discussion of some of the biggest questions human beings ever thought to ask themselves.We talk about how translations from one medium to another affect the way we tell our stories; the media theory and logic of reinterpretation; C.S. Lewis and the important critiques of The Chronicles of Narnia; how Lyra Silvertongue is like and unlike Anakin Skywalker and other complex heroes whose success is the fall of an established social order; evolution in a cosmos where tension and opposition are required, and unity rhetoric deeply suspicious; the collapse of networks and how His Dark Materials anchors in the same archetypes as Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos; 21st Century religion and faith in the absence of objects of faith; and much more.You can follow Stephen Hershey on Twitter (twitter.com/stephenhershey) for hot takes and on Twitch (twitch.tv/stephenhershey) for games and philosophy/astrology talks.You can link up with Kynthia Brunette on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/kynthia) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kynthia/) to learn more about her and her work with MAPS.Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other great things as they spill out of my overactive imagination.We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’d like to help edit transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Intro and outro music by Skytree.Related Reading:NBC News — HBO’s His Dark Materials Does Philip Pullman JusticeThe Ringer — Jack Thorne interviewed on the HBO AdaptationEsquire — HBO Show vs. Books DifferencesRadio Times - HBO Show vs. Books DifferencesBBC - Philip Pullman WebchatRelated Future Fossils Episodes:111 - Android Jones on Analog + Digital, Painting the Sutras, & Being an Artist Dad71 - JF Martel (On Sequels & Simulacra, Blade Runner 2049 & Stranger Things 2)61 - Jamaica Stevens (On Crisis, Rebirth, Transformation)55 - "Creativity & Catastrophe" (Talk at Palenque Norte, Burning Man 2017)53 - A Very Xeno Christmas! with Evan "Skytree" Snyder14 - WESTWORLD Problems (feat. Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops)And when you’re ready to switch it up with some psychoactive music, here's my music and my 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

2021 comes in hot with Michael Dowd, ecumenical Christian preacher turned climate grief advocate, whose Post Doom Conversations are a well of wisdom for anyone prepared to stop fighting the inevitable* and start celebrating what actually can be done in these weird, scary, precious years to come. We discuss his time as an evolutionary biology evangelist and his friction with techno-optimists, what it means to live sustainably within a mature religion of place, urban scaling and collective action problems, a general theory for the collapse of market-based civilizations, and how to reorient one’s faith to planetary and secular values that allow us to accept reality as it is and avoid doing further evil to the Biosphere and each other. (*We spend a lot of time in this encounter digging underneath the surety to ask not “Is there hope,” but “Where am I still doomed by my conditioning?”)Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other great things as they spill out of my overactive imagination.We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’d like to help edit transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Intro and outro music by Skytree.Further Reading:My appearance on Post Doom Conversationshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d2VX3cx-zM“Irreversible Collapse: Accepting Reality, Avoiding Evil”https://youtu.be/iQeK04WOGaARafe Brown at the University of Kansas Natural History Museumhttps://biodiversity.ku.edu/herpetology“What if preventing collapse isn’t profitable?”https://www.postcarbon.org/what-if-preventing-collapse-isnt-profitable“Six ways to think long-term” by Roman Krznarichttps://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/six-ways-to-think-long-term-da373b3377a4Gordon White and James Ellis on Accelerationism, Meaning, and Exithttps://runesoup.com/2020/08/accelerationism-meaning-and-exit-rune-soup-hermitix-swapcast/John Michael Greer’s The Long Descenthttps://www.amazon.com/Long-Descent-Users-Guide-Industrial/dp/0865716099Neil Postman’s Technopolyhttps://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-Postman/dp/0679745408Zach St. George’s The Journey of Treeshttps://www.amazon.com/Journeys-Trees-Forests-People-Future/dp/1324001607Further Listening:MG on cultural mutation rates, network latency, and the collapse of civilizations:https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/139MG with Geoffrey West on Complexity Podcast re: cities and scalinghttp://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/35MG with Scott Ortman on Complexity Podcast re: even ancient rural human settlements obey “urban” scaling lawshttp://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/48MG with Tim Kohler and Marten Scheffer on The Future of The Human Climate Nichehttp://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/33MG with Mark Nelson on Biosphere 2 and the yoga of optimismhttps://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/95MG with Lydia Violet on deep ecology and community as medicinehttps://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/82MG with Jamaica Stevens on crisis, rebirth, and wisdomhttps://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/61Kevin Wohlmut reads The Next 10 Billion Years according to Ugo Bardi and John Michael Greerhttps://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/116And if you just need a breather, here's my music and my 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 I’m delighted to bring The Teafaerie (ep. 100) and Ramin Nazer (ep. 120) back to Future Fossils Podcast! These are two of the funniest, weirdest amateur futurists I know, and I hope you agree this discussion was worth the wait while I spent hours making it sound like we didn’t just talk over each other like overexcited dorks for two-plus-hours.In this episode, we discuss the virtualization of live events as relates to the science fiction of Charles Stross and Hannu Rajaniemi, the stratification of class according to who can afford to be somewhere in person, and my writing on AR and telepresence for H+ Magazine (“Best Seat In The House”) and the Body Hacking Conference Blog (“Being Every Drone”). We talk about the perverse incentives of social media as an outrage generator and surveillance capitalism pit trap, and how we might be able to redesign the social Web so it doesn’t drive us all (even more) insane. Plus:• The world being transformed into an unending series of limnoid events• Having “an affinity for the rapids”• Should we just side with our new AI overlords?• Beyond the Black Mirror• A very curious fan theory about the Flintstones & Jetsons• The Bell Riots in Star Trek DS9• Eternal upload simulation matrix reawakeningsAnd more, until we all get shut down by a robot in mid-sentence.If you aren’t sated after listening to their episodes (and who could be?), subscribe to Ramin’s Rainbow Brainskull Hour and The Teafaerie’s YouTube Channel.Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other treats.And Happy Holidays: I just made all of the Future Fossils Book Club recordings free. You’re now welcome to enjoy at your leisure our small-group discussions on some of my favorite works of science fiction and psychedelic non-fiction: books by Peter Watts, Diana Reed Slattery, Cixin Liu, Octavia Butler, and Jeff VanderMeer…AND here’s a Spotify Playlist for psychedelic experiences created by Future Fossils listener Rian Bevans (host of The Riancarnation Podcast) that, along with legends like Brian Eno and Four Tet, heavily features instrumental music by yours truly (some of which also made it on the official clinical playlist for FDA’s MDMA for PTSD trials).We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’re up for helping edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Intro and outro music is from Skytree’s new LP of spacey downtempo electronica, Infraplanetary, which I highly encourage you to purchase. Official podcast theme is “God Detector” by Skytree (featuring Michael Garfield).Enjoy, and thanks for listening! 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’m honored to speak with musicologist Phil Ford, co-host of Weird Studies, on a voyage that takes us from elevator muzak to aquarian cults to Disneyland to the future of magical warfare. We discuss what it means to be (or want to be) “primitives of an unknown culture,” the staging of nature, what happens when your aesthetic commitments become your reality commitments, ontological anarchy, and The Super Mario Bros Movie’s influence on the 2016 presidential election. Keep your ears peeled for deep cuts on Fight Club, the Alt-Right, Les Baxter, William Irwin Thompson, Jurassic Park, and Burning Man…Read Phil’s essay, “Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica.” And while you’re at it, read my comments on his essay about Time Binding & Music History on The Long Now Blog.Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other great things as they spill out of my overactive imagination.We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’re up for helping edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Even though we didn’t watch them until later, there must be time loops flowing back into this conversation from both the documentary Feels Good Man and the satire Sassy Justice. Go watch them both immediately and you’ll know what I mean.For more, check out my appearance on Weird Studies 26 and Phil’s appearance on Future Fossils 126. And then read more about why things keep turning into crabs at Boing Boing and in the Future Fossils Facebook Group (1, 2).Intro and outro music is from Skytree’s new LP of spacey downtempo electronica, Infraplanetary.Cover art sourced from the uncannily appropriate less-real.com/images/21162.Enjoy, and thanks for listening! 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

“There’s a Mormon Tabernacle Choir inside of everyone. It’s just better to include and embrace all these facets of identity.”I’m not going to waste your time trying to explain Stuart Davis. He’s been a guiding star for me and presumably many other irrepressibly nondisciplinary artists for over a decade, one of the founding figures of my adult psyche in its pluriform contortionism. Musician, painter, poet, talk show host, stand-up comic, film-maker, and depth psychologist, the man knows no bounds and it’s all I can do to follow closely and listen carefully, which I have since I first encountered his work in 2004.Stuart is long overdue to be on the show, but the timing is perfect, because we’re here to talk about ALIENS. Not the admittedly excellent film, but the living reality of them and their astonishingly intimate relationship to us, as disclosed by the growing archive of guests on his show, Aliens and Artists.We discuss the ethics of withholding advanced technologies like zero-point energy from the general public; Rick Strassman getting kicked out of his zendo for psychedelic research; circadian rhythms, sleep disruption for dream yoga, and parenting sleep deprivation psychosis; when Psyche argues with the Mantis; the self is a choir; daily banishings and welcomings; and why we implore you to only work with the visitors that respect human sovereignty.I’ll stop now. Just listen and be amazed.Links:Stuart’s WebsiteStuart's Podcast"Fear of Light" (song)"Universe Communion" (song)“ET Presence & The Forfeiture of Human Sovereignty” (blog)“Becoming Human” (comedic short)Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other great things as they spill out of my overactive imagination.We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’re up for helping edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Intro and outro music is from Skytree’s new LP of spacey downtempo electronica, Infraplanetary, which I highly encourage you to purchase.Enjoy, and thanks for listening! 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 chat with film-maker Michael Morgenstern about his latest transmedia project, I Dared My Best Friend To Ruin My Life, which takes young adults down a mind-bending and immersive narrative vortex about weaponized synthetic media to teach vital 21st Century literacies and the society-threatening implications of #deepfakes.While I’ve been speculating on the ominous (albeit numinous) social and psychological consequences of deepfakes since my 2017 sci-fi short “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’” and discussed the more hopeful possibilities in last week's episode with Stephanie Lepp, this conversation takes the futurist speculation to a whole new level to examine:• How convincing and deceitful information-age fictions pose a risk not just to the fabric of society but even our personal relationships;• How deepfakes will turn the logic of waking life from something sober and tangible to something more like a dream or shamanic journey;• How Michael and his team based the execution and roll-out of this project on an industrial fake news factory and open-source software community;• How electronic media function like a parasitic alien intelligence;• The ethical concerns they had to consider and enact in producing something intended to create good but capable of accidentally causing serious harm;• And so much more...Visit Michael's website:https://everythingisfilm.comCheck out Team Zander, the looking glass through which you can experience this kaleidoscopic weirdness:https://teamzander.comCopious additional resources related to this project here:https://mailchi.mp/24cbc646d833/this-is-definitely-real-let-the-game-begin?e=11fc71d569Please rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and countless other wondrous goodies as they spill out of my overactive imagination.Big Announcement: I've just released all of the Future Fossils Book Club call recordings from behind the patrons-only paywall! Help yourself to eight newly-available discussions on some of my favorite works of psychedelic science fiction and non-fiction, including Blindsight by Peter Watts; Xenolinguistics by Diana Slattery; Liu Cixin's The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End; Jeff VanderMeer's Borne; and Octavia Butler's trilogy Lilith's Brood (Dawn, and Adulthood Rites, and Imago).We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’re up for helping edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Intro music is from my new release, "Löwenmensch," part of an archaelogical research project on cross-domain knowledge transfer from prehistoric sculpture to modern electronic art and music, which you can read all about (and watch me perform) here. Find it on major streaming platforms at https://smarturl.it/lionman.Outro music is from Skytree’s new LP of spacey downtempo electronica, Infraplanetary, which I highly encourage you to purchase.Go deeper into the fractal rabbit hole of related media we reference in this episode:My new essay, "The Evolution of Surveillance, Part 4: Augments & Amputees"https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/the-evolution-of-surveillance-part-4-augments-amputees-92075fabd5a6"On Coronavirus, Complex Systems, and Creative Opportunity"https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/on-coronavirus-complex-systems-and-creative-opportunity-b82e227a22e7"We Will Fight Diseases of Our Networks By Realizing We Are Networks"https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/we-will-fight-diseases-of-our-networks-by-realizing-we-are-networks-7fa1e1c24444"Advertisement is Psychedelic Art is Advertisement"https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/advertisement-is-psychedelic-art-is-advertisement-c4b000f4bbd0Future Fossils 81 - Arthur Brock of Holochain on Rethinking Currency & The Future of Distributed Systemshttps://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/81On Becoming Aware: A pragmatics of experiencing, by Natalie Depraz, Francisco Varela, and Pierre Vermerschhttps://books.google.com/books?id=iYJy_2909NAC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false"A Calculus for Self Reference" by Francisco Varela (DOI, PDF)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03081077508960828http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/recordings/varela_calculus.pdf"The Science & Technology in Futurama That Everyone In Ad-Tech Can Appreciate," by Bryan Bartletthttps://www.business2community.com/marketing/science-technology-futurama-everyone-ad-tech-can-appreciate-01028949Enjoy, and thanks for listening! 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 g

This week I chat with artist Stephanie Lepp, producer of Infinite Lunchbox, the Reckonings podcast, and — most excitingly, for me — Deep Reckonings, a stunning new project exploring the “pro-social” uses of AI-generated “deepfakes” and other synthetic media for education, therapy, and other beneficial outcomes. While I’ve been speculating on the ominous (albeit numinous) social and psychological consequences of deepfakes since my 2017 sci-fi short “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’”, it never really occurred to me that these tools aren’t just dangerous but potentially healing and transformative. Stephanie, however, has made it very clear in her new videos, and in her extensive statement for the project, that sometimes all we need to imagine a better world is to see it faked convincingly. In this discussion, we explore how deepfakes can expand and enrich the potent benefits of earlier media like theater and the novel; why it’s so controversial to portray wrongdoers finally accepting accountability and moral leadership, even when it’s an explicit fiction; and how science itself is going to have to change to accommodate a more nuanced and multi-dimensional understanding of truth.Stephanie at IFTF | LinkedIn | TwitterPlease rate and review Future Fossils on Apple Podcasts! And if you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and many other great things as they spill out of my overactive imagination.We’d also love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. (And if you’re up for helping edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, please drop me a line at [email protected].)Intro and outro music is from Skytree’s new LP of spacey downtempo electronica, Infraplanetary, which I highly encourage you to purchase.Enjoy, and thanks for listening! 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 bring together Burning Man’s resident philosopher Caveat Magister (the author of The Scene That Became Cities, from Penguin Random House) together with anarchist community organizer Naomi Most of Noisebridge and Playa trickster historian Mitch Mignano for a conversation about the festival’s uneasy but remarkable transition into virtuality — and how holdouts worldwide persisted in “IRL” celebrations that preserved the face-to-face community and presence Burning Man cannot yet replicate online.This discussion was a total treat, and covered everything from complex systems and the evolution of the city to the new and strange ontologies emerging in the blue light of our screen-bound era.• Was Burning Man always just a physicalized version of the World Wide Web? Or is its power and uniqueness in precisely how it ISN’T?• Is Burning Man a kind of virtual reality already, or — like VR — just a not-entirely-successful effort to screen out the world that creates it?• What is the value of culture for culture’s sake, and why should we protect the efforts for it?• Is Black Rock City pointless, or is it an engine for teaching Applied Existentialism…or both, and more?• What happened at the in-person Burning Man(s) this year, when people still decided they would gather during a pandemic?This episode is dedicated to the memory of James Oroc.Writing and videos we mention in this episode:*** The Case of the Missing Man by Caveat Magister (Read the whole series!) ***Sand Talk by Tyson YunkaportaThe Garden of Forking Memes by Aaron Z. LewisWilliam Irwin Thompson in 1975 x Burning Man 2013 Through Google Glass [video]Transformational Festivals are a Symptom of Dissociation by MGGiving Into Astonishment: Scenes from Burning Man’s American Dream by MGIf you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, please send your friends to this page and encourage them to support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and whatever else spills out of my overactive imagination. We’d love to have you in our thriving little Discord server, if you’re interested in meeting other members of our awesome scene. And if you’re up for helping edit Future Fossils Podcast transcripts, you’re my hero! Please drop me a line at [email protected] music in this episode is “Valles Marineris” from my Martian Arts EP. Outro music is an early mix of “You Don’t Have To Move,” from my forthcoming/in-progress album The Age of Reunion.Dig deeper into these related Future Fossils episodes:25 – DADARA on Art, Virtual Realities, and Flow States31 – Mitch Altman of Noisebridge on Hacking Life for Fun & Profit41 – Hannah Faith Yata on Art, Wilderness, and Rebellion55 – “Creativity and Catastrophe” at Palenque Norte, Burning Man 201761 – Jamaica Stevens on Crisis, Rebirth, and Transformation71 – JF Martel on Sequels & Simulacra76 – “Technology as Psychedelic Parenting” at Palenque Norte, Burning Man 201796 – 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 Attention Enjoy and thanks for listening! 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 know now that the rules of reality change by zip code.”In a conversation recorded nearly a year ago on September 27, 2019 (and now hilariously strange in light of months of pandemic quarantine), I speak with the ultra-talented, delightful, immediately relatable and immensely likable Colin Frangicetto — guitarist for the excellent band Circa Survive and solo project Psychic Babble, painter, writer, and podcaster — about what we’ve learned from our high-dose psychedelic experiences, from our extended and potentially crazy periods of constant synchronicity, and from traveling the world playing music and making art.This episode is a dual-show crossover in which we interview each other, and which also appears on Colin’s wonderful podcast, The Cosmic Nod. Pop over there if you want to read all the nice things he said about me in his show notes. I agree with him that on this call you hear our friendship being born...Be sure to follow Colin’s Instagram & Twitter accounts, and support him on Patreon, and support Circa Survive on Patreon.And of course, please consider supporting Future Fossils and all of the other creative work I do (which is A LOT) on Patreon also. With three jobs and a kid, it’s a miracle this show still exists, entirely by the graces of listeners like (and deliciously unlike) you.It’s even more of a miracle that we have such an excellent community flourishing around it…here’s an invite to our Discord server, if you’d like to be a part of that.SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! Colin and I are going to be speaking together at this weekend’s Psilocybin Summit — along with folks like Paul Stamets, Shane Mauss, Dennis McKenna, Bett Williams, Bia Labate, Simon Yugler, and about 50 other amazing brilliant people. Go here to grab your tickets and I’ll get a tiny slice of the pie.Also, the entire back catalog of Future Fossils will soon have searchable transcriptions courtesy of podscribe.ai. If you’re a podcaster, I cannot recommend or even imagine a better service for your transcripts. Go tell Pete Birsinger I sent you and make your life a little easier.TOPICS COLIN AND I DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE:His recent maiden voyage with ayahuasca and his integration at home.The indoor trip versus the outdoor trip and life at home versus life on the road, and the experience of time on tour versus at home.How life in the early 21st Century is like The Book of Exodus and the nonlinear path of the Wandering Jew, faith-tested in the wilderness.What relatively rare artist-and-musicians have in common…and why “everybody hates Bo Jackson.”What it means to be an obligate social organism, totally dependent on society, trending evolutionarily in the direction of both gods and babies, and what that means for finding ourselves in collaboration, generally.The post-career world, and in what ways we have to be a different state of matter than our parents’ generation.When magic becomes commonplace and matter-of-fact.Psychedelics and time: telepathy, or precognition?Transcendental cephalopods: WHY IS THAT A THING?Time loops and Chapel Perilous synchroncity vortices.Taking (or not taking) ayahuasca literally.How to learn how to love yourself.Big Mind Process and Internal Family Systems.Why is the self plural, in the first place?How to deal with the weird and sometimes scary things you accidentally create, responsibly.Cancer treatment vs. crime and punishment.Relationships as covenants between complementary strengths and weaknesses in partner organisms that do not share the same worldspace, and how that results in hilarious disagreements about UFOs.Breaking the tentacles of co-dependency with psychedelic solo work.Multiple-timescale creative project bouquets.Aaaand snapping turtles.LIST OF AMAZING (AND AMAZINGLY WHITE) PEOPLE WE MENTION:The Ungoogleable MichaelangeloSean-Paul Von AnckenShane MaussErik DavisPapadosioWilliam Irwin ThompsonDuncan TrussellErick GodseyMichael PhillipCory AllenJohn KaagRobin ArnottTopher SipesWeird Studies PodcastMark PesceMitch Mignano 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

For episode 151 we welcome Jon Marro, one of the purest creative souls I’ve ever had the luck to encounter. Jon hit me up a couple months ago to participate in a documentary film he’s producing, interviewing artists about their creative visions, and our first conversation for his interview series was so solid and heartfelt I had to swap interviewer seats with him and have him on the show. In this episode we discuss his understanding of his role in life, his relationship to time and identity and purpose, his commitment to the Great Work and service of the creative life, and where he thinks we are in the Big Picture amidst all the chaos and possibility of 02020.Check out his awesome website and art portfolio at JonMarro.com.Music in this episode is from my new EP of solo fingerstyle guitar tunes, Mudras, which you can find on Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play right here: smarturl.it/mudrasIf you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, send your friends to this page and encourage them to support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and whatever else spills out of my overactive imagination.Another way to help: I would love your assistance editing transcripts for new Future Fossils episodes! Please drop me a line at [email protected] if you’d like to help with this or want to suggest any other kind of offering for the show, time or money or whatever else.And to go deeper, check out the other work I’m doing for the two non-profits that I work for:For mind-expanding science conversations, dig into my other podcast for The Santa Fe Institute, Complexity, at complexity.simplecast.com.For mind-expanding news about deep time and our wild world, check out my new contributions to The Long Now Foundation blog at blog.longnow.org.Enjoy and thanks for listening! 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

For Episode 150 we welcome back Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, one of the most formidable and daring intellects I know, and the author of a new paper integrating over 650 books on UFOs and the paranormal, from over 150 disciplines, to trace the outline of a unifying meta-theory of the weird. In this episode, we discuss how Sean reconciles ten different hypotheses for the UFO phenomenon with his “mutual enactment hypothesis,” an updated ontology based on reconstructive post-modernism and Indigenous ways of knowing. I tell the story of the most powerful and transformative experiences of my life, as a case study in high weirdness. We talk about the distinctions between the real, the Real, the hypo-real, and the hyper-real, and offer examples from film, literature, and comparative religion.Do you have incredulous friends? Show them the extraordinary website Sean made with Tom Curren, WhatsUpWithUFOs.comRead Sean’s paper, “Our Wild Kosmos!: An Exo Studies Exploration of the Ontological Status of Non-Human Intelligences”Read its precursor, “An Ontology of Climate Change: Integral Pluralism and the Enactment of Multiple Objects”Read Sean’s latest newsletter on recent UFO disclosuresLearn more about and enroll in Sean’s course on Exo StudiesIf you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon. Patrons gain access to over twenty secret episodes, unreleased music, our book club, and whatever else spills out of my overactive imagination.Dig deeper with the Future Fossils episodes we reference in this conversation, including:37 - Michaelangelo aka Void Denizen (Excavating the Future with "Paisley-ontology")60 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Goes Meta on Everything: Integral Ecology & Impact71 - JF Martel (On Sequels & Simulacra, Blade Runner 2049 & Stranger Things 2)91 - An Oral History of The End of "Reality"99 - Erik Davis on How to Navigate High Weirdness113 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens on Exostudies: Philosophical Explorations of the UFO Phenomenon117 - Eric Wargo on Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious126 - Phil Ford & JF Martel on Weird Studies & Plural Realities132 - Erik Davis on Perturbations in the Reality Field149 - Cultural Somatics & Ritual as Justice with Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, and Naomi MostAnd stay tuned for my three-part conversation with Stuart Davis about (most of) my UFO experiences on his awesome Aliens & Artists Podcast!Music in this episode:“Delta Pavonis” by Michael Garfield“Olympus Mons” by Michael Garfield“Your Heart Comes Back Online” by Michael Garfield“Out There” by Skytree 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

“A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having. If there won't be dancing at the revolution, I'm not coming.”– Emma GoldmanStrap in for what might be the best Future Fossils episode yet: a four-way with guests Tada Hozumi and Dare Sohei of the Ritual as Justice School and guest co-host Naomi Most, in which we discuss how trauma manifests in posture and social interactions, how cultures are bodies we participate in, how the individual does not exist as we were taught, how interpersonal and sociopolitical dynamics shape and are shaped by their histories, how creative practice and ritual serve to regulate inherited wounds and ameliorate unresolved conflicts, and so much more I can’t even bother to get into it here. A truly profound, far-reaching, incompressible conversation you might want to queue up twice to be sure that you catch it all…“We’re bringing our families with us whenever we walk into a situation and to think that we’re individuals is missing the point.”– Dare SoheiRitual as Justice School: ritualasjustice.schoolTada Hozumi: selfishactivist.comDare Sohei: bodyaltar.orgNaomi Most: twitter.com/nthmost + medium.com/@nthmostIf you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon for over nearly twenty secret episodes, our book club, and much more.Theme Music:“God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Episode Cover Art:“Going Home” by Michael Garfield (dedicated to Sara la Kali, the Black Madonna)Read Tada Hozumi’s essay, “A Funk Lesson: If life is a dance, violence is a choreography, but so is justice”Read Tada Hozumi’s essay, “The Cultural Somatic Paradox” 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 sit for a soulful chat with speaker, writer, and organizational development expert Sahana Chattopadhyay of Mumbai to discuss her essays “The Power of Communities in Uncertain Times” (Part 1, Part 2) and “Befriending Uncertainty in a Post-COVID World.”Follow Sahana on Twitter & LinkedIn.If you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon for over nearly twenty secret episodes, our book club calls and recordings, and much more.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield) 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 is something different: author-read audio of the first four essays from my ongoing book-in-progress, How to Live in The Future.These essays are the first in my feature-length interrogation of the insufficient ways we think about the future…a poetic exploration of the fruitful interface between psychedelic mysticism, evolutionary theory, and critical futurism.For more along these lines, check out Future Fossils Episode 129 for the Boom Festival 2016 talk that started it all…You can read these pieces — rich with explanatory hyperlinks and graphics — at the links below:Part 1: The Future is A PlacePart 2: The Future is More of EverythingPart 3: The Future is Both True and FalsePart 4: The Future is Exapted/RemixedMusical interludes from my 2017 live album, Pavo: Music for Mystery, recorded live on tour across Australia.Episode cover art by Collin Elder, whose paintings feel to me like the fine art approximation of what I am trying to communicate in words. Follow him on Instagram.Support this show on Patreon for over a dozen secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and weekly community calls, and much more.Later essays in this series, which I’ll likely read in a fall episode:Part 6: The Future is DisgustingPart 7: The Future Acts Like YouPart 8: The Future is Indistinguishable from MagicAlthough I’d rather you shop elsewhere, you can grab the books we talk about on Future Fossils at Amazon and they’ll chip me a piece of the proceedings at no cost to you. 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

Where do I even start explaining this week's episode? Probably with a vignette: someone came up to me after I was on this all-star panel discussion featuring five living legends — psychedelic researchers Ralph Metzner and Dennis McKenna, author Allan Badiner, film-maker Gay Dillingham, and former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson — and asked me who I was and what I was doing there. I was the youngest person on stage by twenty years, and had done nothing with my life yet that put me in the same weight class as any of them. And yet there I was to offer my synthetic insights and play music to a packed house in a geodesic dome on an utterly magical evening.We had an intense discussion about nuclear disarmament, ecological destruction, and psychedelic medicines hosted by my then-new friends at Synergia Ranch. Rick Doblin of MAPS and Johnny Dolphin of Biosphere 2 fame got up on stage that night as well (although not for this panel). It was a night I'd dreamt about weeks in advance with uncanny accuracy, and was the catalyzing moment that ultimately led to my moving to Santa Fe in 2018. I'm deeply grateful to Synergetic Press for hosting the event, inviting me to join this panel, and letting me share this recording as a podcast episode.Read all about this awesome April 2016 symposium and salon here:https://www.synergeticpress.com/raising-earth-consciousness-at-the-synergetic-symposium-and-salon/So much has changed since then and honestly, it isn't the most timely episode to publish at this moment, but I'm working hard to get some awesome people on the show soon who can speak to what we're living through in history right now.I would have more to say about this, but it's been a very busy week. If you'd like more new listening material, I strongly recommend checking out the recent conversation that I had with physicist Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute about how the science of cities undercuts the economic myth of endless open growth and forces us to seriously study other paths to a sustainable planetary culture.Please take a moment to leave a glowing review of Future Fossils at Apple Podcasts.If you would like to link up with other amazing Future Fossils listeners, please email me and I'll invite you to our Discord server.Support this show on Patreon for over a dozen secret episodes, the Future Fossils Book Club (next up: Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler!), and muuuuuch more.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield).Additional Intro Music: "Lambent" by Michael Garfield.Thank you for listening! 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

"We are living through a health crisis, an economic crisis, a racial crisis, and a democratic crisis. Each would be historic on their own. All of them are connected. That they have struck together in this way just might be what compels our transformation."– Anand GiridharadasThis week’s episode is over three years in the making: my talk from Earth Frequency Festival 2017, about a revised narrative of prehistory from which we can grow new myths better suited for our times. I almost didn’t post this episode at all, even after nearly two full days of editing, because it felt tone deaf to zoom out so far and discuss topics like mass extinctions, the evolution of plant-pollinator symbiosis, my critiques of transhumanism and SpaceX, and how fish and clams represent complementary strategies for dealing with turbulent environments. But this feature-length rant erupted from me at a time that rhymes intensely with our current moment: I was scheduled to present on futurism immediately following a heart-wrenching and visceral presentation on the (then ongoing) Standing Rock protests, and it felt right then as it does now to wield what I know in service of new stories that better serve the work of social justice. After all, it is only the alienated and colonized mind that sees climate change, racism, economic inequality, and ecological devastation as separate issues.No: if we are to truly embrace our interbeing with the biosphere (and we must), then we cannot exclude other human beings — or even nonhuman sentient beings — from our maps and models of the nondual truth of who we are. One more disclaimer: This is the last unpublished talk I gave before I started work at the Santa Fe Institute, where my poetic intuitions and armchair science scholarship have been challenged to rise to far greater rigor and discernment. I regard this two-hour screed as both one of my most inspired riffs, the closest that I ever got to a Terence McKenna sermon…but it’s also full of embryonic, raw ideas that have evolved A LOT since this recording happened. I share it with you not as a completed document but as a snapshot of a story in the weaving, and I hope you hear it as the work in progress that it was and is.Thank you and I hope you’ll take a moment to read the supplementary materials below, and support the crucial social justice orgs helping protect the lives and freedom of your neighbors here on Earth, in this especially intense and pivotal moment. For the next few weeks I am donating 100% of the sales of my original paintings and inventory of canvas prints to ACLU and Unicorn Riot. If you would like to put your money to a good cause and get some cool art for doing so, please visit https://instagram.com/michaelgarfield for details.Support this show on Patreon for over a dozen secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and weekly community calls, and much more. Or, better, read and share the resources below.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield).My embarrassingly white and male list of mentions from this talk:Bruce Damer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ernst Haeckel, Proteus (documentary), Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Diane Musho Hamilton, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Kary Mullis, Francis Crick, The Bardo Thodol (book), Ram Dass, Neem Karoli Baba, Biosphere 2, William Irwin Thompson, Marshall McLuhan, Alvin Toffler, Marie Toffler, Stewart Brand, Wall-E (film), Gregory Bateson, John Muir, Richard Doyle, Darwin’s Pharmacy (book), Thomas Henry Huxley, Gideon Mantell, Colin Elder, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter, The Light of Other Days (book), Albert Einstein, John C. Wright, Timothy Leary, Elon MuskShare these resources:–––> Ally Tools <–––http://www.ally.tools“Whether or not you think you hold them, stereotypes shape the lives of everyone on Earth. As human beings, we lack the ability to judge each situation as unique and different…and how we group novel experiences by our past conditioning, as helpful as it often is, creates extraordinary complications in society. As modern life exposes us to an increasing number of encounters with the other in which we do not have time to form accurate models of someone or some place’s true identity, we find ourselves in a downward spiral of self-reinforcing biases — transforming how we practice law enforcement, justice, and life online. Our polarized, irrational world calls for an intense look at what it will take to humanize each other — at traffic stops, in court, on social media, and anywhere our doubt about an unfamiliar face can lead to tragic consequences.”https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/7Complex systems science resources on algorithmic justice, moral economics, nonviolent policing, healing slums, countering hate on social media, and more:https://santafe.edu/news-center/news/sfis-statement-support-victims-injustice“One can’t claim to be an ally if one’s agenda is to prevent his or her own future dystopias through actions that also pr

This week I talk with film-makers Monica Long Ross and Clayton Brown about their bizarre and wonderful documentary, We Believe in Dinosaurs — and how a creationist amusement park in Kentucky provides a lens through which to examine the tense relationship between science, religion, and business in America. This is a conversation about what happens when premodern, modern, and postmodern worldviews duke it out on a landscape of rapid change for which none of them are sufficient. It’s about the surreal Young Earth dinosaur museums of Late Capitalism, but more, it is about our trust (or lack of trust) and where we put it when we lose the plot.Support this show on Patreon for over a dozen secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club and Discord server, weekly community calls, and much more.Grab the books we talk about on Future Fossils and Amazon will chip me a little of the proceeds, at no cost to you.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Additional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael GarfieldTopics:How an Australian fundamentalist extremist ended up building a $200M “replica” of Noah’s Ark as a theme park in rural Kentucky.How Young Earth creationists can doubt geology but trust high-energy physics: their distinction between experimental versus observational science.The role of Big Money and economic development in the entire history of dinosaur science, and the use of dinosaurs as rhetorical tools (or “missionary lizards”).What’s really behind the culture wars between science and religion…and how it is that fundamentalists can come to believe they’re practicing better science than the scientists.The fractal weirdness of culture wars between different sects of American Christianity about matters of scientific investigation.Amusement parks and museums as architectural arguments for particular worldviews.Why so many people distrust science, and why people seek out preposterous but easy-to-understand narratives when history moves too fast for comfort.What it looks like when 21st Century global industry meets 1st Century religious zealotry: giant warehouses full of masterfully produced educational media for Bible propaganda.Why our origin story and Earth history will probably always be an issue of contention and an area where people will distrust scientists.How faith and hope appears in the science of the abstract and its practitioners: both legitimate high energy physics, and illegitimate cold fusion.Religious privilege versus religious freedom (and how trying to teach Genesis in high school biology is not about religious freedom, but power).Entering a recombinant flux of personal worldviews, thanks to the Web, in which all possible religions exist.What is the tipping point where an abstract risk becomes tangible enough for all of us to agree on its existence, much less a strategy for adaptation?Mentions:Bill Nye, Ken Ham, Mirta Galesic, Henrik Olsson, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida, Isaac Newton, Aristophanes, Charles Darwin, Steve Brusatte, David B. Kinney, Santa Fe Institute, Large Hadron Collider, The Ark Encounter, The Smithsonian Institute, University of Kansas Natural History Museum 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 documentary film-maker Sanjay Rawal about his profound and inspiring movie, 3100: Run and Become — which explores the spiritual practice of long-distance running around the world, from the American Southwest, to the Kalahari Desert, to a remote mountain monastery in Japan. We discuss how Sri Chinmoy (a student of Sri Aurobindo, the founder of integral yoga), started the 3100 mile race in New York, and what it has become; how to be a documentary film-maker without engaging in cultural appropriation; endurance running as an integral yoga and an act of spiritual service; exertion as its own reward; and how ultradistance running and other endurance sports close the gender gap. This was literally a moving conversation for me — after talking with Sanjay, I put on my shoes and went for a run. I hope it does the same for you.Learn more and watch the movie at https://3100film.com.Support this show on Patreon for over a dozen secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and weekly community calls, and much more.Grab the books we talk about on Future Fossils and Amazon will chip me a little of the proceeds, at no cost to you.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Additional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael Garfield 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 get to talk to one of my favorite fiction authors, Alex Shakar, about the profound darkbright bizarritude he channels through his two visionary satirical novels The Savage Girl and Luminarium — two works that show the möbius strip of sacred and profane, futurity and timelessness. We bounce off a long list of paradoxical domains, including saving the world with consumerism, metamodernism, ironic religion, virtuality, neurotheology, trauma and radical meaninglessness, the military entertainment complex, hikikomori, and zen comedy…Alex Shakar’s Website.Support this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for.Grab the books we talk about (and others Alex recommends) and Amazon will chip me a little of the proceeds, at no cost to you.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield) 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 way we discuss what needs to be done now will shape what it is possible to do. This is not a moment to fix a machine, this is a moment to compose new cultures.”This week’s guest is Nora Bateson, Director of the International Bateson Institute, author, film-maker, and founder of the Warm Data Lab. Nora is a magician when it comes to getting people to live the relational and dynamic, the embodied and incompressible. If you’re a podcast enthusiast you’ve probably already bolted a bracing dose of her warm wisdom on shows like Team Human and Future Thinkers, but of course we live in unique and unprecedented times, so I’m honored that we got to sit down for a US-Sweden Zoom call and talk about how current world events touch down in the messy and beautiful everyday.Notes:Bateson Institute WebsiteNora’s Essay, “Eating Sand”MarketPlace reading group for the CORE Econ TextbookSupport this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for.Grab the books we talk about on Future Fossils and Amazon will chip me a little of the proceeds, at no cost to you.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Additional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael Garfield 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

We’re extra lucky to have not one but three amazing guests this week: culture critic and religious scholar Erik Davis, philosopher and author Tony Blake, and trickster historian Mitch Mignano.We planned to have a completely different conversation but due to the overbearing reality of the COVID19 crisis it ended up being a deep dive into the mythic and mystical dimensions of our moment — including nonhuman agency, the virus as teacher, Pan and panic and pandemics, solutionism isn’t the solution, the danger of efficiency logic, and a media diet for meditation on the darkness of nature. We talk Marshall McLuhan, G.I. Gurdjieff, Tanya Harrison, J.G. Bennett, Weird Studies, Acyuta-bhava Dasa, Santa Fe Institute, and a whole lot else. I would ordinarily make more of an effort to provide an exhaustive list of the books, people, and other resources mentioned in this episode, but there are so many — and I am so eager to make this conversation available while it’s still fresh and gooey. Besides, last week’s show notes were heroic in scope.Feel free to tweet at me (@michaelgarfield) if you want more info to help you follow up on anything.For more Erik Davis, check out episodes 99 & 132. For more Mitch Mignano, check out episodes 57 & 98.Erik’s latest book High Weirdness is now available as an author-read audiobook.Support this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for.Grab the books we talk about on Future Fossils and Amazon will chip me a little of the proceeds, at no cost to you.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Additional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael Garfield 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 take a pause on interviews to share my thoughts on the Coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of complex systems and network collapse—and talk about the possible silver lining we might find in a time of crisis and enforced social isolation. I hope it helps! Feel free to email me with your thoughts, questions, feedback.Support this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for.Grab the books I mention on Future Fossils at my Amazon Shop and I get a small-but-helpful kickback from the retail leviathan.Intro Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)• Here are all of the other podcasts and reading I mentioned in this episode, followed by some useful info about the COVID19 pandemic specifically:David Weinberger on Future Fossils about how we’ve always relied on black box explanationsW. Brian Arthur on on Complexity Podcast about the economy as a complex adaptive systemDr. Mike Ryan of the WHO on decision-making under conditions of uncertaintyJamie Stantonian on the disruptive impact caused by the Gutenberg printing press“An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’”, my sci-fi short about the philosophical challenges wrought by technological changeSamo Burja on how crisis requires a more fluid social response than institutional expertise“I did ‘The Mindscape’ thing, which was basically me sitting there in a chair, with an enormously long cigarette, sort of talking in real East-Midlands monotone – so no change there – but the essential thing about culture turning to steam, the fact that everything was speeding up so much that we seem to be heading for, what I refer to as a ‘phase transition period’, which is where one state suddenly and chaotically changes from one state to another state; like the boiling point of water.I said that I felt that we were approaching a kind of cultural boiling point, but as you know with the emergence of the cloud – I mean back then it did perhaps sound a bit extreme and a bit weird and the sort of thing that you might expect an Occultist, who clearly does a lot of drugs to say. But I think that events since then have made it look a lot more conservative as a guess at the future.”– Alan MooreWatch The Mindscape of Alan Moore on Archive.org or YoutubeHunter Maats on Future Fossils about the challenges of education and knowledge infrastructure in the Information AgeDouglas Rushkoff on Future Fossils about “present shock” and new modes of social organization for adapting to technological changeRaissa D’Souza on the collapse of complex networksMe at the Australian Psychedelic Society (Melbourne) on “May you live in interesting times”Nicole Creanza on the interplay of cultural and biological evolutionBruce Damer on Future Fossils about his origins of life researchWashington Post on Isaac Newton’s “Year of Wonders”Charles Eisenstein’s superb big-picture book, The Ascent of HumanityDr. Richard Hobday on the value of sunlight in fighting viruses and maintaining good health12 Museums Offering Virtual Tours, courtesy of Travel & Leisure• Useful info pages about the pandemic:Sam Scarpino, complex systems scientist, on solid mental and physical health advice for dealing with COVID19Worldometers real-time tracking of the pandemicARCGIS real-time tracking of the pandemic on a global mapTimeline of pandemics and their relative severityFast Company on how to lead in times of crisisThe Cut on how not to go stir crazy (mostly good exercise advice) 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 Tanya Harrison, a Mars geologist, author, and infectious banner-waving space enthusiast. We talk about For All Humankind, her new book with Danny Bednar on the legacy of the Apollo missionsm, as both a planetwide accomplishment and also a high bar against which we have since not seemed to measure up...as well as:What it’s like to drive a mars rover and extend yourself technologically through space.What will have to change for us to attune to the plural temporalities of life on multiple worlds.How the tone of science fiction and space fantasy has changed over the course of our lives, for better or worse.The cultural differences between national space programs and commercial “jobs in space” exploration.The tragedy of how light pollution cuts us off from crucial perspective and our tangible belongingness in the starry cosmos.Using space-based imagining to understand our own planet as the unique and wonderful place it is.Tanya's Website & Twitter.Tanya Works for Planet Labs.Here’s another great (short) conversation with her about Martian geology.Grab the books we mention in this episode and I get a tiny kickback.Support this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for.People Mentioned:Jessa Gamble, Barry Vacker, Divya Persaud, Stewart Brand, Carl Sagan, Sara Imari Walker, Rusty Schweickert, Biosphere IIMedia Mentioned: For All Humankind, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, Ad Astra, The ExpanseTheme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Additional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael Garfield 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

Rolf Potts is one of the world’s most notable travel writers, author of five books on his adventures, pioneer “digital nomad” before that was even a thing, a totally inspiring person who has carved his own path through life and now helps others do the same through writing workshops and his excellent podcast, Deviate. (Worth noting that as of the time of this episode’s publication, his latest podcast episode is about dinosaurs!) For me personally, Rolf’s one of the most influential writers I’ve ever read, for his book, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, a slim but profound volume that utterly changed my life forever.In this episode we look back on Rolf’s twenty-five years of world travel and travel writing, and how the digital transformations of the 21st Century have changed the way we move around on and experience this planet. We talk #vanlife, citizen diplomacy, psychogeography, the Instagram effect, getting lost with Google Maps, writing as a way of paying attention, and seeing your own home with fresh eyes. It’s a powerful discussion that ignited in me that old call to journey past the far horizon — which, it’s key to note, can also mean the inner boundaries of normalcy we raise around our lives, an invitation to encounter the familiar anew…Rolf’s Website, Writing, & Podcast:https://rolfpotts.comGrab the books we mention in this episode:https://amazon.com/shop/michaelgarfieldSupport this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldMentioned: Marco Polo Didn’t Go There by Rolf Potts, Storming The Beach, Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, Kevin Kelly, Google Maps, Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand’s Islands & Beaches, The Beach by Alex Garland, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Benning, World Hum, Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff, Burning Man, Matt Kepnes, The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr, Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey, The Pessimists Archive, The Tao Te Ching translated by Brian Browne Walker, Ari Shaffir, Livinia SpaldingRelated Reading:“Giving Into Astonishment: Scenes from Burning Man’s American Dream" by Michael Garfield (2008)Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldAdditional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael Garfieldhttps://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/little-bird-the-eschaton 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

A bit about this week’s amazing guest in her own words:“I’m finishing up my Masters in Transpersonal Art Therapy at Naropa University. I've been studying Transpersonal Psychology for 6 years now. My focus has always been the theoretical and practical orientation to psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. I was raised by dead heads and frequent cannabis users, who simultaneously maintained deep professionalism and family values. So, drug culture was really inherent in my development. I have so much to say about Psychedelic Art Therapy. I've worked on the MAPS MDMA PTSD study as a night attendant for 4 years now. I work both in Boulder and in Fort Collins on this. I'm a trained Ketamine therapist (trained by three different institutions over the last year) and have done tons of above ground ketamine and cannabis work myself. While undergoing somatic psychedelic therapy (using ketamine, mostly), I made art throughout the whole process.I'm a freelance training coordinator. I've coordinated a training for the Ketamine Training Center, headed by Dr.Phil Wolfson, in addition to my role as Education Outreach Coordinator for Innate Path. I had the gift of being a resident workshop facilitator this summer at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. I ran workshops on astrology, non ordinary states, and art therapy, In addition to recycled art jewelry making (with recycled scraps from Meow Wolf Denver and Vegas), AND, couples art therapy workshops. Basically, I like to consider myself a servant to the progression of psychedelic medicines. I'm an artist, an art therapist, an integration specialist, a community organizer, and a thought leader.”Alyssa’s InstagramInnate Path’s WebsiteMy 2018 conversation with Saj Razvi of Innate Path on Psychedelic PsychotherapyMy playlist of music that made it into the MAPS MDMA clinical trialsFuture Fossils Podcast is entirely listener-supported. Support the show on Patreon for more inspiring extras than you probably have time for.• Mentioned in this episode:Rick Doblin, Marcela Otolora, Sarah Gail, MAPS (Multidisciplinary Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), Zendo Project, Innate Path, Mister Rogers, Ann Shulgin, Saj Razvi, Aubrey Marcus, Kristin Karas, Dancesafe, Meow Wolf, Alex Grey’s The Mission of Art, Allyson Grey, Brian Browne Walker's Translation of The Tao Te Ching, Terence McKenna, Wim Hof, Margaret Wertheim, Onyx Ashanti, The Teafaerie, Spider & Jeanne Robinson’s Stardance Trilogy, Geoffrey West’s Scale, Anthony Thogmartin, Mi.Mu, Imogen Heap, Diana Reed Slattery’s Xenolinguistics, Donna Haraway, Mitch MignanoBuy any of the books we mention in this episode through my Amazon Shop and I’ll receive a tiny kickback at no extra cost to you.• Alyssa quotes:“I think that my early psychedelic experiences showed me that I was something outside of depression.”“Mister Rogers by day and Ann Shulgin by night.”“I love getting to be a spokesperson for a scapegoated substance.”“Art helps us create the map of our psyche.”“It’s not that I’m a powerful therapist and you are this wounded person. We are co-adventurers in the psyche.”• Future Fossils Theme Music:“God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield 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 Michael Phillip, host of Third Eye Drops Podcast, to discuss some of the biggest and most persistent questions in philosophy — for which he feels he received definitive answers in a recent psychedelic experience: what it means to live a life of virtue, whether the universe is biased toward a Great Unfolding integration and continued process of perfection, the nature of evil, the question of free will, our responsibility to one another and to the future…It’s a great discussion with one of my favorite podcasting peers. Enjoy!Future Fossils Podcast is entirely listener-supported. Support the show on Patreon for more inspiring extras than you probably have time for.Buy any of the books we mention in this episode through my Amazon Shop and I’ll receive a tiny kickback at no extra cost to you.Michael Phillips’ podcast: thirdeyedrops.comMichael has appeared on Future Fossils before:Episode 14 on WestworldEpisode 52 on Blockchain with Jennifer SodiniEpisode 67 on Magic & Media with Douglas RushkoffKey item in question for this conversation is Manly P. Hall’s “The Wisdom Series: The Challenge of Forever Becoming, Part 1”Mentioned:Daniele Bolleli, The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P Hall, The Wisdom Series by Manly P Hall, Darwin’s Pharmacy by Richard Doyle, “Wizard” (Song) by Stuart Davis, Erick Godsey, Book of Job, What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, Joseph Campbell, Accelerando by Charles Stross, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Terence McKenna, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul SartreFuture Fossils Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield 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

Multi-instrumentalist musician Anthony Thogmartin of Papadosio [band], EarthCry [solo project], and Seed to Stage [music production tutorials] joins us for the first time since Episode 10 to talk about navigating the exponentially expanding body of human knowledge, how interfacing with different media technologies yields new minds and selves at the intersection, and the profound creative evolution he and his band have undergone by embracing tools like Ableton Live. For the ten-plus years I’ve known him, Anthony’s optimism and enthusiasm have inspired me to seize the day and strive for new horizons, and whether or not you make music I have no doubt this conversation will inspire you as well.Future Fossils Podcast is entirely listener-supported. Support the show on Patreon for more inspiring extras than you probably have time for.Buy any of the books we mention in this episode through my Amazon Shop and I’ll receive a tiny kickback at no extra cost to you.Mentioned:Ishi Crew, Complexity Explorers Facebook Group, Scott E. Page, Mirta Galesic, SpaceWeather.com, Neal.Fun/deep-sea, Caitlin McShea, InterPlanetaryFest.org, Sam Brouse, Korg Minilogue, Ableton Push, Meow Wolf, Jessica Flack, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin, Darwin’s Pharmacy by Richard Doyle, Gary Weber, Erik Davis, A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, Plato, Thoth, Technopoly by Neil Postman, America Before by Graham Hancock, Wile E. Coyote, Star Trek, Google Translate, Ableton Live, Bitwig, Microdose VR, Android Jones, Anson Phong, Sennheiser, Magic Leap, David Block, Phaedroid, Glitch Mob, Mi.Mu gloves, Oculus Quest, Google Duo, Burning Man, Sweet Melis, The Glass Cage by Nicholas CarrDiscussed:The value of long-form media and the conversation as ways of deepening our engagement with an accelerating world.Neurodiversity and the “social molecule,” and how being different together is good for all of us.“The only reason we [human beings] made it is because we’re good at talking to each other.”Our understanding of the planet is not just expanding outward, but also inward…not just into the vastness of space but deeper into the oceans and crust and into inner space.The more attention you pour into things, the more finely differentiated they become, and things get bigger on the inside than they are on the outside.Earthcry’s concept album Identity Mitosis and its multimedia storytelling about a conversation between AI and Gaia long after the extinction of humankind.What does the future look like without us?Living at the bottleneck between the complexity of the micro and the macro.The self as a plural ecosystem and the conscience as the voice of various unconscious neural motifs erupting into consciousness.Awakening as the abandoning of episodic autobiographic memory and the vice grip of the default mode network.The egoic self as a kind of electrical phenomenon, and possibly a kind of auxiliary or emergency preservation mode (not our natural state of balanced health).Metabolic ontology and the possibility of reality itself changing with the states of the extended body-mind in psychogenic networks.The cybernetic self and how performing music is also being a part of the music technology ecosystem.The dependency of thought on the mediation of technology…handwriting vs. typing, etc., and how different selves emerge in different contexts.Polarization and our refusal to understand one another.Generation gaps in technological fluency.Is the Universal Translator not RUNNING Starfleet?Letting Ableton Live take over Papadosio.YouTube vs. Instagram.Moore's Law and miniaturization in music performance, and moving with the current of technological evolution rather than against it.Michael’s open call to developers to help us create software for controlling music and visuals simultaneously with a gestural interface in virtual reality……and Anthony’s disclaimers about why this hasn’t happened yet.Augmented reality versus virtual reality and how evolution is co-evolving with the human body and mind (not just people adapting to technology).What matters depends on the scale at which you’re paying attention.Future Fossils Theme Music:“God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield 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 mathematician and cosmologist Brian Swimme, faculty at CIIS’ Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program and author of several books, including The Universe is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story (which we discuss in this episode). Brian is a major voice in the conversation about the new myths required for us in an age of planetary culture, an articulate and approachable thinker whose warmth and generosity — virtues equal to his intellectual achievement — really shine through in this conversation.Brian at CIIS Brian at the Center for Humans and NatureBrian’s documentary, Journey of the UniverseBrian’s Coursera class“A lot of scientists will say, ‘I don’t have a metaphysics. I just deal with facts.’ But it’s not the case…”“Locating ourselves in time I think is the fundamental scientific or spiritual challenge.”“The Earth is closer to a living organism than it is a collection of objects.”“One of the fundamental errors of the modern period is RUINING this idea of Singularity…it’s thinking of ourselves as the intelligent species in a world that is basically a collection of objects. And then we imagine that we with our clever minds are creating technology…rather than joining a process.”“It could be that the future of science depends on the question of the within, the inner world…”We Discuss:Locating ourselves in time…The Universe is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation StoryZak Stein (Episode 97)What We Learn From Mass ExtinctionsWe Are Something The Planet Is DoingThomas BerryPierre Teilhard de Chardin (although V.I. Vernadsky coined the term “noosphere”)James P. CarseErnst HaeckelSean Esbjörn-Hargens (Episodes 60 + 113)Dr. Blue (Episode 124)Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldAdditional Music: “Valles Marineris” by Michael Garfieldhttps://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/martian-arts-epSupport this show on Patreon to join the book club and for secret episodes:https://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

This week’s guest is author, culture critic, and philosopher of the weird Erik Davis, whose work has been one of my main inspirations for almost ten years. His latest work of epic scholarship, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, is an exploration of topics I presumed inaccessible to academic inquiry so masterful I’ve been evangelizing it for months and basically forced a copy on my boss (David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute, who was a guest in Episode 75). In this episode we peer into the intersection of psychedelics, madness, systems science, postmodernism, and religious studies to ask about the truly other that refuses to allow us a clean answer to the questions, “What is the Real?” and “Did that just really happen?” Strap in for one of the headiest and most important conversations that we’ve ever had on Future Fossils…Join the Future Fossils Podcast Patreon for exclusive perks like an extra 10 minutes of this conversation, in which Erik & Michael discuss “black goo.”Visit Erik’s website to sign up for his email updates (always wonderful) and stay abreast of upcoming events, such as his talk at the SF Psychedelic Society on Thursday Dec 19.Get a copy of High Weirdness at MIT Press.Erik’s appearance on Future Fossils Episode 99 (a kind of prequel to this conversation).My 2011 and 2012 appearances on Erik’s podcast, Expanding Mind.Erik and I discuss over video chat (part 1, part 2) the revised and expanded third edition of his book Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information.Shop through my Amazon storefront and support the show indirectly with your purchases:https://amazon.com/storefront/michaelgarfieldJoin the Future Fossils Facebook Discussion Grouphttps://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsShow music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldMentioned:Jacques Lacan. Mark Fisher. Carol Cusack. Eric Wargo. Timothy Morton. Graham Harman. Jeff Kripal. Emelie Gomar. Bruno Latour. Albert Hofmann. Sasha Shulgin. Richard Doyle. Williiam James. Phil Dick. Cesar Hidalgo. Rachel Armstrong. Edward Snowden. Daniel Paul Schraber. We Discuss:The abyss is close to home.“The real, by definition, is not amenable to symbolization. Whatever kind of yen we have to sustain the symbolic in the face of the real is going to fail. And in that sense, the real is fundamentally traumatic.”Perturbations of the reality field.Extimacy.“That’s not me…or if it is, I’m not me anymore.”Refusing to remain within the purely human. To lean out. To open a portal.The Weird vs. The Uncanny.Fiction vs. Religion.“In some sense Burning Man and the spirituality of Burning Man, if you want to call it that – the invention of new subjectivities, the development of an ecstatic culture at this end stage of capitalism and modern mythology – in a way is a kind of later iteration of the things I saw in the 70s.”Material agency in the practice of science. “Science is not practiced by humans alone.” “Drugs as active participants in the enactment of their effects.”“The thing about thinking is that sometimes it’s really clear the way you are actively putting things together, or actively exploring. But then sometimes it seems as if you are almost kind of taken over by an idea, and then the idea has stuff it wants to do, and you are just the connector or vehicle for it. What it means to think is to be in relationship to enigmas that have things to say.”“With reductionism in general, it’s very difficult to explain novelty.”“A psychedelic compound sitting on the shelf is not psychedelic. It’s in the interaction that you explore and discover its phenomenological features.”“There’s no way out of environmental effects in the psychedelic experience - both in the set and setting, and in terms of whatever mysterious multiplicities lie in the material itself. So there’s no way to do capital S Science with psychedelics, despite the fact that they are material molecules that reliably have a certain kind of metabolic arc and can be explained in terms of how they are broken down in the body and even light up certain regions or the brain, etc., etc. I think it’s kind of wonderful. But I think that’s where the weird is: the weird is in that. The weird is in the way you can’t get out of the loop.”Psychogenic Networks and Maximal Entropy Production.“If attention is the fuel, then everywhere we turn, we’re producing self-fulfilling prophecies.”Living Fictions.Weird Studies Episode 36.Lachmann et al. 1999 re: Optimal Encoding & Fermi’s Paradox & “The symbols of the divine first emerge in the trash stratum.”“The revelation is always relativized. Once we’re in this cybernetic situation, then not only do we not know, ‘Is that noise or is that signal?,’ but even when you do get a message, you don’t get to know. Because you’ve knocked out that realm of certainty that in the past said, ‘What you’re thinking is true

What’s the line between being inspired and getting broken by transcendental experience? This week’s episode was recorded live at the Hook & Ladder at Minneapolis as part of a special multimedia event I did with the Psychedelic Society of Minneapolis, a group led by neuroscientist Jessica Nielson. Jessica and her PhD student Link Swanson were both dear friends of mine before they met each other and I cannot be happier that they’re doing psychedelic neuroscience research together now at UMN. In this conversation, which involves me definitely talking too much (but in the role of honored out-of-town guest, which makes it somewhat excusable), we talk about the effects of psychedelics on perception, the continua between inspiration and trauma, and what it might mean to make a machine learning algorithm trip balls. Among other things…Dr. Jessica Nielsonhttps://med.umn.edu/bio/psychiatry/jessica-nielsonLink Swansonhttps://swanson.link/The Psychedelic Society of Minneapolishttps://www.meetup.com/Psychedelic-Society-of-Minneapolis/Support Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldShop through my Amazon storefront and support the show indirectly with your purchases:https://amazon.com/storefront/michaelgarfieldShow music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldDiscussed: The hallucination-perception continuumTrauma and novelty in biological and cultural evolutionThe Stoned Ape Hypothesis RevivedChapel Perilous & studying mental illness with machine learningDo psychosis and the psychedelic state really have much in common?Making AI tripHow do psychedelics affect the way our brain processes perception?Pharmacogenomics and whether it might help explain The Experiment at La ChorreraNovelty and the collapse of civilizationsEvolution, learning, and addictionMentioned: Saj Razvi (Our free and public Patreon discussion) • MAPS • Santa Fe Institute (FF Episode 75) • Andreas Wagner • Terence McKenna • Stuart Kauffman (FF Episode 125) • Stuff To Blow Your Mind Podcast on Urban Animals • Werner Herzog • Dinotasia • Richard Doyle • Erowid • Robert Anton Wilson • Dennis McKenna (FF Episode 88) • Geoffrey West • Rudolf Steiner 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 writer Lydia Laurenson, editor of The New Modality, whose beat explores how people find and make meaningful lives in our era of change, anxiety, and new opportunity. For years Lydia also wrote a popular BDSM blog under the pseudonym Clarisse Thorn, an experience that has profoundly shaped the way she understands plural and mutable identity in the digital age — and the importance of protecting our right to act behind created identities in the web’s cultural commons. In this episode, we discuss the years of weird and wonderful adventures she’s had as a writer and a researcher of digital society, and how those experiences have shaped her vision for a new print magazine…Join the show's proud roster of supporters: patreon.com/michaelgarfieldTheme music: “God Detector” by Evan Snyder feat. Michael GarfieldAbout The New Modality:Kickstarter • Medium • Facebook • TwitterRelated Writings:Lydia Laurenson:“My Year in San Francisco's $2 Million Secret Society Startup”The Atlantic article about internet pseudonyms and anonymity O'Reilly article about culture's impact on social media adoption Policy briefs on digital media governance and polarizationClarisse Thorn’s WebsiteMichael Garfield:The Future Acts Like YouDiscussed:The Latitude Society and postmodern startup esotericism.Can we scale community? Can we continue to redefine ourselves in an increasingly regulated planet-scale society?Pseudonymity and speaking freely on the Web…the importance of being able to explore new versions of yourself, to entertain a plural identity.Reimagining the family. Coming to care about the conversation around alternative parenting approaches…having children without having a romantic relationship.3+ parent families, platonic co-parenting, co-housing distributed childcare, and other forms of interdependence emerging in our pluralistic and atomized age.Polarization, peacebuilding, and digital governance on social media.The individual as institution, the long tail, Rule 34, and the future of evolutionary vascularization.Can we design social media to help people respect each other more and foster better conversation? (And if so, why aren’t we doing it?)Mentioned:Erik Davis • Doug Rushkoff • Vice Magazine • Whitney Houston • Blade Runner 2049 • Hypermodernity • Lazarus (Graphic Novels) • Altered Carbon • Adam Curtis - Century of the Self • Her (movie) • John Perry Barlowe • Papadosio • Tricia Wang • Oprah • SXSW • The Benedict Option • Mirta Galesic • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin • Andrés Mora (writer) • Toda Peace InstituteCover Photo by Jane Hu with Model Anina Nethttp://janehu.com/ + http://www.anina.net/ 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

…in which I talk about Jurassic Park, Terminator, Pokémon, cat videos, Radiolab, Google, DARPA, Charles Stross, the Singularity, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Martine Rothblatt, Genesis P Orridge, neo-advaita nondual philosophy, and angels. (“Do you guys believe in angels?”) DISCUSSED:Bringing Heart Back To Futurism. Technological Acceleration As Psychedelic Yoga. It Doesn’t Have To Be Either/Or. Scan Lovers. Can We Have Identity Politics In A Posthuman Society? Control or Liberation?Recorded at Boom Festival's Liminal Village, 16 August 2016 — here’s the official Boom Festival video of the talk.Originally published on my archive of public talks at bandcamp, this lecture became the basis for the essay series with the same name, which you can read on my Medium blog.Support The Show: patreon.com/michaelgarfieldTheme Music: “God Detector” by Evan Snyder feat. Michael GarfieldQUOTES:The future is an idea that is constructed socially, just as insanity is constructed socially.Most people spend most of their time thinking about what the world we’re moving into is going to look like, and very little time thinking about what it’s going to FEEL like. Who we are going to be, once all this transformative change has settled into a newly-constituted world age?It’s very telling that so much of the conversation around artificial intelligence is this notion that there’s some kind of demon emerging through the machine for us to encounter and to reckon with. That there is something we have to confront…something that may destroy us even as it transforms us. And I think that the problem here is that this is a half-chewed sandwich. We’re right there on the precipice of recognizing that we too are implicated in this global conspiracy, that we too are participating in the evolutionary process, and it falls upon us all to heal this alienation from the natural world – especially as it appears in non-human living systems and as it appears in non-human machine intelligences. And to recognize, first of all, that we are a function, we are an action, of Earth’s geology.It’s by failing to identify our own transcendental nature – our own identity beyond the opposites of subject and object, self and other, nature and culture, the made and the born – that renders the transcendental as something against which the limited identity of the egoic self has to be defended. And so we experience what could be regarded as the emergence of a planetary Christ child – as the internet swallows us and we awaken together into this planetary identity, we experience this as the intrusion of a Borg mind or Terminator: Rise of the Machines. We are capable in our understandably anxious paranoid delusion of seeing only the demonic manifestation, because it’s so much easier to reject this kind of radical transformation than it is to embrace it and to steer it. And I’m hoping that by the end of this talk you all feel slightly more empowered to participate in this future, and to participate in the growing number of people worldwide that recognize that it falls upon us as we birth a new age, to love what we create. And to infuse it with love and creativity, and not to reject this baby, but to raise it right.The mirror was believed to have terrifying spiritual properties: that a mirror can steal your soul, or that a vampire couldn’t be seen in a mirror because it had no soul. And likewise with the camera: anything that renders the previously unconscious as the conscious, anything that shows our selves to ourselves in a new way and thus creates an object out of what was originally the subject, a new “it” out of what was “I,” is going to appear to us as the monstrous.As we become more transparent to one another, we become more accountable to one another. And the accountability is in some sense the masculine structure that we see growing as the companion to the desire to share with one another as a sort of feminine urge for intimacy.As a river runs all possible ways down a mountain, the future will have more options for how to be a human being than before. It will have more ways for us to become partial and non-inclusive of the future than ever before.We are becoming more and more compatible with the machine and it is becoming more and more compatible with us, in the same way that we domesticated corn and corn domesticated us.We have this profound opportunity to invest as much beauty and love and creativity into this new space as we possibly can. 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

We live in an age of increasingly lively, intelligent, and responsive technologies, and have a lot of adjusting to do. This week’s guest is one of the major inspirations animating Future Fossils Podcast: Kevin Kelly, co-founder of the WELL, Senior Maverick at WIRED, author of numerous books that profoundly shaped my thinking about our coevolution with technology. After reading Kevin’s latest essay on the imminent challenges and opportunities of augmented reality – a superb rendering of the bizarre and wonderful new possibilities of a “mirrorworld” in which everything has an annotated digital double, constantly rewritten – I asked him to join me for a discussion of how our relationship to change is changing, what choice means in a world beyond control, how history becomes a verb amidst the metamorphosis, and how to properly engage these potent evolutionary tools we’re building…Kevin’s Website:https://kk.orgSupport Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, book club membership, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldShop through my Amazon storefront and support the show indirectly with your purchases:https://amazon.com/storefront/michaelgarfieldlntro music by Michael Garfield, “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up After KO”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldWe Discuss:• How evolutionary technologies restore us to a kind of pre-modern relationship to living systems we use and depend upon, but do not control (growing tomatoes, raising livestock, having children).• How do we understand choice and agency as cybernetic selves, all of our behavior informed by invisible or opaque entitities (like Cambridge Analytica, or simple GUI design)?“We are both the creator and the created. We are both the parent and the child of ourselves. We are the masters of technology, and the slaves to it. And we will always be in that conflicted, two-faced relationship. That’s why we wring our hands, and we’ll be wringing our hands in a thousand years, because we can’t escape from the fact that we make our tools and our tools shape us.”• If we are going to spend the rest of our lives as noobs in an ever-accelerating metamorphic world, what does that mean for our conceit of continuous identity?“The question is not, ‘What does it mean to be human?’ but, ‘What do we want humans to be?’”• How do we have the metaphysical conversations we need (about what we are, what matters) if we can’t agree on the objective ground truth?“We have only one way to detect lies, which is retrospectively. So it’s almost impossible to ascertain, infallibly, the truth in the present. We can only trust sources that have proven to be reliable in the past, and that’s ultimately where the truth resides.”“We can’t think our way out of these problems. We should think about them. We should try to forecast and analyze and quantify. But these things are so complex, they’re life life and a child growing up, that we have to experience our way through them. We have to engage with them through use to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.”• The new superpowers and profound challenges (both practical and philosophical) afforded us by augmented reality and its attendant “mirrorworld” of spatial computing.“The big problems that we’ll all be pulling our hair out about in twenty years will be ones we never thought of.” “I’m for steering technology through engagement, through using it. I think if you don’t use something, you don’t get to steer it. That’s why prohibition, outlawing, regulating to a standstill are bad ideas. Because then you don’t get to steer.”• The past and future of history-as-a-verb. Contingency vs. inevitability. How does Kelly situate himself in time?“Most of my favorite people talking about the future are historians… The more I want to look into the future, the more I need to look into the past.”“1% per year is all we need: if we create 1% more than we destroy every year, that’s all we need for civilization.”• What is Kelly most concerned with communicating to the unborn future?“The statistical destiny for most time capsules is to be forgotten. They’re buried and nobody remembers them. 95% of them are forgotten within 5 or 10 years. But the ones that are opened, you get to see this message from the past into the future. And almost invariably, the contents are not interesting to us now.” Go Deeper:Out of Control, New Rules for The New Economy, What Technology Wants, The Inevitablehttps://kk.org/books/The Expansion of Ignorancehttp://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/10/the_expansion_o.phpAR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform – Let’s Call it Mirrorworldhttps://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/The End of Video as Evidence of Anythinghttps://kk.org/ct2/the-end-of-video-as-evidence-o/Great Kevin Kelly interview

This week’s guest is Cory Allen – mindfulness instructor, audio engineer, host of The Astral Hustle Podcast, binaural beats factory, and now the author of Now is the Way: An Unconventional Approach to Modern Mindfulness. We talk about cutting through the noise and insanity of our overwhelmed digital transition age with simple presence, the rewards of even minor and incremental acts of awareness, and the richness of expressive work created from a place of calm alertness.Grab yourself a copy of Now is the Way from my Amazon storefront:https://www.amazon.com/shop/michaelgarfieldI’m on Cory’s show in episodes 72 & 92:http://www.cory-allen.com/theastralhustleCory’s on my show on episode 16:http://shows.pippa.io/futurefossils/16Discussed:• What is the now?• Is mindfulness about getting better at achieving goals, or is it really about something else?• How has meditation practice changed in the age of always-on digital insanity? • The collapse of past, present, and future into NOW and living in the bardo afterlife of the 21st Century.• Getting over the infinite to-do list.• Music as meditation vs. The Concept Album. Songwriting vs. temple music.• Impermanence and cycles of creation/destruction in music.• Create from where and what you are.• Notes on the media diet for original thinking.Support Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, book club membership, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldlntro music by Michael Garfield, “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up After KO”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield 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 Future Fossils gets even weirder with guests Phil Ford and JF Martel, cohosts of the Weird Studies podcast. Weird Studies is one of my favorite shows, hands down. Phil and JF’s marvelous threading together of the joyful and the bleak, the transcendent and the hangdog, the gems of literature and the tentacles of the ineffable real, is a sorely needed tightrope walk in an era insistent on clean answers and decisive resolutions. The modern world is a VERY weird place, and these two gentlemen are some of my most trusted curators of places to look and ways of seeing for thriving amidst that weirdness. In this episode, we explore (among other eldritch horrors) the irreducibility and always-ness of the weird; the historical and metabolic forces that join beauty and trauma; and the value of the stubbornly unassimilated fact and its adherents.Dig into Weird Studies and become transformed:https://weirdstudies.com Support Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, book club membership, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldFind all of the books we mention and support the show at no cost to yourself:https://www.amazon.com/shop/michaelgarfieldA very thin slice of the topics we discuss:JF on Future Fossils (episode 18 & episode 71)MG on Weird Studies (episode 26)Weird Studies on Marshall McLuhanWeird Studies on William JamesErik Davis - High Weirdness (Future Fossils episode 99; Weird Studies episode 48)Leonard Cohen - “Waiting for the Miracle”Phil: “The seawall we build against the seething Lovecraftian whatever.”Eric Wargo - Time Loops (episode 117)Global WeirdingThe Replication CrisisLady Chatterly’s Lover: “The cataclysm has happened. We are among the ruins.”Richard Doyle - Darwin’s PharmacyDouglas Rushkoff - Present Shock (episode 67)William Burroughs - Naked LunchAleister CrowleyJonathan ZapFurtherrr CollectiveBeauty & DangerTheodor AdornoWeird Consultants to help you organize for the unexpectedDavid Weinberger - Everyday Chaos (episode 123)lntro music by Michael Garfield, “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up After KO”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield 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 living legend, transdisciplinary scientist-philosopher Stuart Kauffman, whose pioneering work on self-organization and the emergence of order helped launch the field of complex systems science and has brought us to the very edge of understanding the origins and nature of life. Over his 50+ year career and six books, including this year’s The World Beyond Physics, Stu has done more than almost anyone to restore the historic union of science and philosophy, articulating a new spirituality for our secular age of systems thinking, and filing numerous patents on technologies of chemical synthesis and quantum mechanics.It's an epic conversation with a bold and boundary-less mind. In this episode we drive right to the heart of one of humankind’s biggest and most persistent mysteries: What is life?Stuart Kauffman’s EXTENSIVE & ILLUMINATING Google Scholar Page:https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=yoPM0F8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdateThis week’s vocabulary word: “ergodic”https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ergodicBecome a Patreon supporter to listen to Part 2 of this conversation, on quantum physics and consciousness:http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Discuss:the adjacent possiblethe origins of lifeniche construction & niche propagation (which i initially conflate, but he re-differentiates)exaptationthe incomputability of the list of all possible uses of a thingwhy are there hearts in the universe?“the universe is non-ergodic and most complex things will never exist”“there are no laws whatsoever for the evolution of the biosphere”contingent, or inevitable? enabled, or caused?the economy creates the possibilities into which it is suckedTerence McKenna’s strange attractor at the end of timeconstraint closure and the release of energy in fewer degrees of freedomabiogenesis and the protocell as a model of its environmentare there constraints without work?the number of cell types in an organism is roughly the square root of the number of genes“information is precisely the release of energy into fewer degrees of freedom”Paul Davies & Sara Imari WalkerJohnjoe McFaddenGiuseppe Longothe system will spend more time in macrostates in which there are more microstates (Boltzmann)Supplemental Materials:Stuart Kauffman’s essay, “No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere”https://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2069.pdf;alsoseeGiuseppeLongoStu’s co-author Wim Hordijk on autocatalysis at Orbiter Mag:https://orbitermag.com/how-did-life-begin-part-3/Michael’s essay, “The Future is Exapted/Remixed”https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/how-to-live-in-the-future-part-4-the-future-is-exapted-remixed-35ea5ca9d877Michael’s extensive notes on the ideas of this episode, “Toward A New Evolutionary Paradigm”https://www.patreon.com/posts/toward-new-1-0-24798022Original intro music by Michael Garfield, “Birds Waking Up In Trees”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsShow outro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield 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 Norman Katz, aka Dr. Blue – a lifelong practitioner of hypnotherapy and the impresario of 3SidedWhole, nine acres of magical weirdness in the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’ve known Dr. Blue for nearly a decade and he’s deeply enriched my life over the years with his amazing stories, empowering mind hacks, and community of soulful southwestern weirdos. In this episode, he regales us with stories of psychological research into UFOs, past lives, fractals, and flow states; the history of hypnosis, his study under hypnotherapy pioneer Milton Erickson, the psychophysiology of laughter yoga, and – more broadly – the importance, and the surprising ease, of choosing the trance you want to be in…Dr. Blue’s Website:http://www.normankatzphd.com/curricula-vitae.html3SidedWhole Website:http://www.3sidedwhole.com/“We were doing LSD as the patient and the therapist simultaneously…it was quite interesting.”“There still is no study that verifies that hypnosis is a particular brain state or neurological constellation. Hypnosis is not a brain state. It turns out to be a skill and an aptitude that’s based on combining attention, and fantasy, and a predilection for dissociation.”“Our perception of reality is at least half constructed by what we expect, what we imagine, and what we pretend. In fact, it’s really hard to teach people new things, because most of the time they’re trying to match new things to their old models.”“It was the only lecture I’ve ever seen where 300 psychotherapists stood up afterward an gave him a standing ovation. And his theory was, bascially, individual psychotherapy is not only ineffective, it’s wrong, and it disconnects people from their community. He said, the biggest mistake in Western Civilization was when Descartes said, ‘Cognito ergo sum,’ ‘I think, therefore I am.’ And what he should have said was, ‘Convivo ergo sum.’ ‘I celebrate in community, therefore I am.’”“At any point in time, ask yourself this question: ‘If I had been hypnotized to be doing what I’m doing right now and having this experience, what would I have been told?’”“Erickson used to tell his students, ‘Pretend, and pretend you’re not pretending.’”“In the West, most people breathe too much.”“I had a formal psychology training at Harvard. Most of that turned out to be nonsense. Learn to unlearn. Learn to forget. Learn to be innocent. Let yourself continue to reinvent yourself and discover who you are, because you are more than any of us think you are.”Support this show on Patreon to join the book club and for secret episodes:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldIntro Music: “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up From K.O.” by Michael Garfieldhttps://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldAppendix: 51 blackbelt hypnosis skills, a partial list of course (the master skill is to perceive a coherent reality in one frame ignoring the 27 other timelines)instant time travel, to past, present and future. multiple timeline realities possible like in string theory in quantum physicshumor, ability to tell self joke and beginning laughing, and see humor and paradox in all situationsincreased creativity as needed, transcend functional fixedness, and create new uses for objects, tools, situations ability to reframe anythingability to create synthesis to create positive action altered states of consciousnessability to make pain disappearability to increase pleasure to ecstatic levelsability to shift mood instantly ability to tap into higher consciousness, both neurologically and to source (the universe)ability to become WISE without thinking (i.e. go into no trance trance in which wisdom flows)abilities to see life as movie within movie within movies and change the storiesability to profoundly relax and melt, both physically and mentallyto be comfortable both inside and outside shared realitiesability to balance two nervous systems, sympathetic and parasympathetic, i.e. hypno-autogenics masterability to come out of shell and act immediately, go fast or slowability to tell stories within stories within stories with threaded key meanings or conceptsability to create useful symptoms as necessary e.g. lust for reading certain materials, exercise, etc.ability to create amnesia or hyper recall memory (memory palace)ability to be in the now in slow motionability to enter mystical states of oneness or everything-ness and transition through the infinity loopability to create and radiate happiness, joy and energyability to avoid the DARK SIDE of hypnotic hexes, vengeance or negative energy and to recognize when others are doing such and interveneability to do hypnotic shamanic ceremonies to invoke sacred spaceability to intervene in disease or create diseaseability to discern the "truth" or "lies" of self and others trance stateshypnotic protection of self and othe

This week we’re joined by David Weinberger, Senior Researcher at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Technology exploring the effects of technology on how we think. David’s led a fascinating and nonlinear life, studying Heiddeger as a young philosopher, working in marketing for high technology, working as a journalist, and authoring four books on technology, creativity, and knowledge. His new book, Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We're Thriving in a New World of Possibility, explores what changes for us in the age of machine learning.I have to admit, I was worried this was going to be just another technocratic puff piece when I started. Certainly it’s a Harvard Business Review Press volume, speaking largely to a business audience; but this is a book that doesn’t flinch at the weirdness of a world in which we know things we don’t know how we know. David’s argument is for a creative embrace of the complexity and mystery that has always surrounded us – that we are in fact made of – and that is becoming much more obvious in light of superhuman but opaque machine intelligences that rehab us from the delusions of our modern pretense that the world is knowable, transparent, and controllable. But unlike the doomsayers of the AI conversation, David has an enviable peace about the fact that we never actually had a lock on what is really going on – and argues eloquently for a fresh encounter with a world of wonder, possibility, and the unknown.David at Harvard:https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/dweinbergerDavid on Medium (“Machine Learning Might Render The Human Quest for Knowledge Pointless”):https://onezero.medium.com/machine-learning-might-render-the-human-quest-for-knowledge-pointless-5425f8b00a45With open APIs, open access journals, game modding, and other empowering information technologies, we are purposefully making the world less predictable.Laws are not necessarily the most accurate way of describing reality.The death knell for the theory of everything - letting go of unifying universal frameworks.“It’s not really a three-body problem. It’s an every-body problem, because everything with gravity effects everything else.”“Everything - EVERYTHING in our lives we basically don’t know, and can’t predict. But the picture of our lives has been, until recently, ‘It’s simple and law-like.’ The chaos, this is our lives. The laws, they are real, they are helpful, but they don’t govern as much as we like to think.”“We think out in the world with tools. There’s no shame in this, but it does mean we’re not locked in our own heads. And now we have new tools.”“…it depends on what you count as an explanation.”“We need to leave room for the accidental, because that is the stuff of our lives.”“I don’t know what a transparent algorithm is.”Are we willing to trade a thousand auto deaths a year for the explicability of autonomous vehicle safety algorithms? Or fuel efficiency?“An explanation is a tool. It’s not a state of the world.”• Relatedly, we just read Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem in the Future Fossils Book Club:https://www.patreon.com/posts/book-club-3-body-29353389?cid=26063131• Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield).• Additional Music: “Single & Feeling” by Michael Garfield. 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 Magenta Ceiba, Executive Creative Officer (ECO) for the Bloom Network, a worldwide constellation of regenerative design hackers working in ecology, economics, civil engineering, software design, restorative justice, organizational development, and more. Bloom is hosting Pollination, an “unconference” or immersive in-person hack-a-thon, this coming weekend in San Francisco – a place for this amazing extended international network (including you, potentially) to convene for design sprints for new practices and systems to restore the health and value of our world.I hope you’ll treat this episode as a gateway into an amazing profusion of awesome ideas and people, just the very tip of a very deep and well-furnished rabbithole.Here are some leads to get you started: • See the Pollination 2019 program on Bloom Network’s website.(If you have friends in the Bay Area who might like to come, here’s a promo code for a $50 discount: BLOOM50 so they can join for just $195. The Bloom Network also has low income/scholarship tickets available: please fill in the form here. I am not an affiliate and get no reward from this, other than knowing that you attended and got to participate.)• Magenta’s personal website.• Another excellent conversation with Magenta (plus copious resource links) at Abundant Edge Podcast.• Mark Heley interviews Pollination 2019 MC (and Future Fossils guest) Maya Zuckerman.These three quotes came in Rob Breszny’s email newsletter today and couldn’t be more appropriate:“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”—Buckminster Fuller“We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.”—Bill Joy“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”—Dan MillmanRelated Episodes:• Episode 46 - Magenta Ceiba’s first appearance on Future Fossils.• Episode 56 - Sophia Rohklin on the inter-relationship of ecology & economy.• Episode 61 - Jamaica Stevens on crisis, rebirth, and transformation.• Episode 98 - Decentralization Panel at Arcosanti w/ members of NuMundo Project, Unify, & The Institute of Ecotechnics.Credits:• Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield).• Additional Music: “Single & Feeling” by Michael Garfield.• Episode Cover Image: Concept Art for The Fifth Sacred Thing by Jessica Perlstein. 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 dive into the troublesome, urgent, and underdiscussed issue of space ethics with planetary scientist and artist Divya M. Persaud. Can we transcend the traumatic conflict and exploitation that characterize human history, come together in compassionate mutual understanding and respectful discourse, and leave our children with better and more interesting problems? Or are we doomed to transmit the legacy of violence we inherited into fractured futures even more disparate, tragic, and unequal than our own time? A deep dive into the real stakes of space, and a preliminary exposition of the ethical discussions we will need to get there…Divya’s Website:https://divyampersaud.wordpress.com/about/Selected Writings:https://phdvolcanology.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/space-and-time-for-diversity/https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2018/02/talking-about-tesla-by-emily-lakdawalla.htmlhttps://twitter.com/Divya_M_P/status/1080310839465467909Intro Music: Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldOutro Music: Divya M. Persaud, “Orogenesis” for Voice, Violin, Saxophone, and Pianohttps://soundcloud.com/divyamp/orogenesis-for-voice-violin-saxophone-and-piano`Additional reading on the ethics of space exploration:https://www.bmsis.org/the-ethics-of-space-exploration/https://theconversation.com/eight-ethical-questions-about-exploring-outer-space-that-need-answers-98878https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/bioethics/resources/articles/articles-on-the-ethics-of-space-exploration/https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/conferences/2017-business-and-economics-of-space/Documents/John%20Rummel.pdfSupport Future Fossils on Patreon to get access to our science fiction book club calls, secret episodes, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the daily conversation in the Future Fossils facebook group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossils 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 surf the fun-gularity with the brilliant artist, standup comic, and podcaster Ramin Nazer! This episode is significantly less a heady philosophy-of-science discussion than usual and significantly more a wank-fest of two people who love each other’s shows going on about all the mind-blowing visionary notions contained therein. Kick back, light some incense, and prepare for a juicy conversation about where we stand in the Cosmic Order and what to do with all of our creative possibility…covering everything from universal basic income to celebrity schadenfruede, visionary art and science fiction to to the psychological impact of trying to stay original in the midst of a tech singularity. If you’re anything like I am, Ramin is going to inspire the hell out of you. Enjoy…Ramin’s Website:https://rainbowbrainskull.com/collections/printsMichael on Ramin’s podcast, Rainbow Brainskull:https://www.raminnazer.com/blogs/rainbow-brainskull-hour/michael-garfieldMentioned:Archan Nair, The Teafaerie, Nikola Tesla, Onyx Ashanti, King Raam, The Rock, Andrew Yang, Yuval Harari, Bill Gates, Star Trek Discovery, Charles Stross’ Accelerando & Glasshouse, Black Mirror, Esperanza Spalding, Duncan Trussell, Richard Florida, Jeff Bezos, William Irwin Thompson, Terence McKenna, John C. Wright’s Eschaton Sequence, Peter Watts’ Blindsight, Eric Wargo’s Time Loops, Colin Frangicetto, Who Built The Moon?, No Man’s Sky, An Oral History of the End of Reality, Ariana Grande, Jimi Hendrix, Amazon Alexa, Life in the Glass Age at Burning Man 2013, Dadara (Daniel Rozenberg), The Mirage Men, Jason Silva, Randal Roberts, Morgan Manley, Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Michaelangelo, Slavoj Zizek, Marshall McLuhan, Chuck Palahniuk, Jordan Peterson, Aziz Ansari, Louis CK, Julia Cameron, Alan Shelton, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Zappa, Mortal Kombat, Roko’s Basilisk, Norman “Dr. Blue” Katz, Joe Biden, Awake Aware Alive Podcast, Expanding Mind with Erik Davis, Rak Razam, Adam Dipert, Giant Leap Dance Company, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Greg Parkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Weird Studies, Brave BrowserSupport this show on Patreon and score a zillion awesome perks:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe to our monthly creative explosion of a newsletter:https://michaelgarfield.substack.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

“The human being is actually this kaleidoscope of different ways to relate to time and space. And to be present with it all, to be awake with it all, is what we’re doing.”Jean Gebser mapped the mutating structures of human consciousness, the topology of mind from archaic to magic to mythic to mental to integral. His work inspired generations of inquiry by authors like William Irwin Thompson and Ken Wilber. Now Jeremy Johnson’s latest book for Revelore Press expands into the truly visionary and unique “amensional” reality that Gebser posits as the next mutation for our planetary culture. “We’re not just going to have an ‘archaic revival’ and dump what we’ve been doing with the nightmare of history. There’s something that’s been achieved in this kind of coalescing of the self and the emergence of spatial linear time that’s true, as well.”“The endgame of perspectivalism and the mental world…is eventually breaking down to the point where everyone has their own little perspectival ‘reality tunnel,’ where nobody’s able to talk to one another and everybody’s in this sense of cultural warfare and fragmentation and social isolation.”“You should know by now that things are ever-present.”Jeremy’s Book:https://revelore.press/product/seeing-through-the-world/ Jeremy’s Podcast:http://www.jeremydanieljohnson.com/mutations Discussed:James JoyceMarshall McLuhanMartin HeideggerSri AurobindoGrant MorrisonTimothy MortonDoug RushkoffEugene ThackerGraham HarmanSupport the show on Patreon for an avalanche of secret episodes, writing, art, music, and the Future Fossils Book Club:https://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

“I want to break the idea that housing is an investment vehicle. I mean housing is a f-cking HUMAN NEED.”This week’s guest is Australian futurist Nathan Waters, whose vision for a mobile, modular mashup of apartment living and driverless cars offers a solution to a trifecta of wicked problems in affordable housing, cost of living, and enjoyable work. We’re talking about a mature and equitable sharing economy that goes asteroid-to-dinosaurs on the exploitative systems of corporations like Uber and Airbnb…this is an episode for anyone who dreams of a fairer and funner world, a world that reconciles the yearning for flexibility and adventure with the desire for a nice place to call your own:Nathan’s popular essay on “driverless hotel rooms”:https://hackernoon.com/driverless-hotel-rooms-the-end-of-uber-airbnb-and-human-landlords-e39f92cf16e1?gi=cecb64856db9Nathan’s blockchain-based skill-sharing economy website:https://www.peerism.org/Nathan’s futures-oriented social media channel, Futawe: https://twitter.com/futawe?lang=enNathan cohosts this YouTube talkshow about the singularity, Hive45:https://www.youtube.com/user/hive45com/videosSomebody either ripped off his driverless hotel rooms idea or just stumbled on it independently:https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2018/11/27/self-driving-hotel-room/2123668002/https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/autonomous-travel-suites/index.htmlFrom this episode:“A job is a terrible, terrible concept. I think of jobs as modern-day slavery. It’s a bunch of wasted mind and human capital.”“We have material abundance because of capitalism, but now it’s almost an existential threat. And we need to transition quickly to something else.”Most of the housing space and vehicle space we own is unused most of the time.We can’t legislate affordable housing because the incumbent politicians are real estate speculators.Modular hotels made of autonomous vehicle components (adding a z-axis to the not-a-trailer-park for hip young professionals).A new resolution for our age-old dialogue between sedentary and nomadic communities, wanderers and people of place.How to fit 9 billion people into 100K apartment buildings; see also: Paolo Soleri’s Lean Linear City.Building a blockchain-based, decentralized skill-sharing economy.A/B testing modular cities to find the optimum layout for human happiness.Mark Lakeman of City Repair and restoring streets to a safe commons.Can we handle constantly fluctuating and re-organizing architecture?Geophysical filter bubbles.Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon and get access to dozens of secret episodes, book club calls, live concert recordings, and more:https://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

This week’s guest is Eric Wargo, author of Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious. Contrary to your most likely first impression based on the title of the book alone, this is a supremely carefully constructed argument that anticipates its critics, understands statistics and their abuse, appeals to our desire for simplicity in scientific explanations, and single-handedly reorganizes the entire field of parapsychological research beneath a new and rational umbrella that allows for major weirdness without sacrificing mechanistic causation or parsimony. Telepathy and spooky action at a distance, Jungian synchronicity and many worlds quantum physics all get re-evaluated under Wargo’s tesseract-brain model, in which there’s no such thing as entanglement, but living systems co-opt quantum post-selection to “steer” toward evolutionarily significant events. If you have ever dreamt of something that then happened in your waking life, this episode’s for you. And if you think that time’s an arrow and this all sounds like high nonsense, this episode is also for you.I can’t possibly attempt to cover all the subjects we discuss in these two hours, but here are books and essays that we reference (some of which I haven’t read):Eric Wargo - Time Loopshttps://www.amazon.com/Time-Loops-Precognition-Retrocausation-Unconscious/dp/1938398920J. Scott Turner - Purpose & Desirehttps://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Desire-Something-Darwinism-Explain/dp/0062651560(I have to make a personal note that without having read this book, I’ve read enough reviews to caution anyone against taking it as legitimate science. I’ve argued for the importance of beauty and desire, purpose and effort in the evolutionary process – and I’ve argued evolution in general does have a kind of direction. So I’m sympathetic to the author’s desire to re-introduce these ideas into the discussion. But from everything I can tell this particular book misrepresents evolutionary theory in its attempts to get where it wants to go, and I can’t support that.)Paul Davies - The Goldilocks Enigmahttps://www.amazon.com/The-Goldilocks-Enigma-Universe-Right/dp/0713998830%Matthew Fox - “The Return of the Black Madonna”http://www.matthewfox.org/blog/the-return-of-the-black-madonna-a-sign-of-our-times-or-how-the-black-madonna-is-shaking-us-up-for-the-twenty-first-centurySeth Lloyd, et al. - “The quantum mechanics of time travel through post-selected teleportation”https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.2615Eric Wargo - “Dream Paleontology”http://thenightshirt.com/?p=4215Eric Wargo - “What Lies Under The Skin”http://thenightshirt.com/?p=3198Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldAdditional Music: “It All Turned Out All Right” by Michael Garfieldhttps://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/track/it-all-turned-out-all-rightSupport this show on Patreon to join the book club and for secret episodes (and the last ten minutes of this conversation):https://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

This week is a watershed moment for Future Fossils Podcast: the show’s first guest host! My friend Kevin Arthur Wohlmut is an engineer who creates occasional one-shot podcasts of fiction and nonfiction, and (according to him) worries about the future too much. We met at InterPlanetary Festival last year on the visit that inspired me to move to Santa Fe, and ever since we’ve had a rich correspondence of mutual far-future fiction recommendations and armchair philosophy chats.Kevin sent me his very cool readings of two essays with the same name, each portraying very different version of “The Next Ten Billion Years,” and both so provocative I felt like sharing them here on the show’s main feed – with my own commentary at the end, on blind spots in imagining deep time and our own psychedelically weird future.You can find Kevin active in the Future Fossils discussion groups at Facebook and Patreon.Professor Ugo Bardi blogs at https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com and http://chimeramyth.blogspot.com. You can read his essay here.John Michael Greer posts longer works at https://www.ecosophia.net and shorter works at https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org. You can read his essay here.Outro reading excerpted from Michael Garfield’s “How to Live in the Future Part 2: The Future is More of Everything.”Cover Artwork by evolutionary robotics researcher Andrew Lincoln Nelson.Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)Additional Music: “On Higher Ground” by Michael GarfieldAdditional Music by http://www.daikaiju.org & http://www.evanbrau.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