Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent essay “Blitzing DC,” about how a networked organization took over Washington. They discuss the early roots of network warfare in Iraq, McLuhan-esque societal rewiring, open source dynamics & plausible promise, the Arab Spring & Occupy movements, empathy triggers, Trump’s 2016 campaign as a hybrid […]
EP 295 John Robb on How a Networked Organization Blitzed D.C. Read More »
Jonathan Larsen, Founder of The Fucking News, proves there’s still a path forward for the fourth estate. You can view the full video conversation: https://youtu.be/b8M4zkhtTZg Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone’s Earth. Learn more about Everyone’s Earth: https://everyonesearth.com/ Change Diapers: https://changediapers.com/ Cobi Dryer Sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/ 🎗️ Support Team Human on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman About Jonathan
Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about wicked mess problems & the potential for a new Cold War centered on AI. They discuss the evolution from chat-based to reasoning AI, military applications, social & systemic complexity in national security, the scaling hypothesis, China vs US competition, DeepSeek R1 model implications, export controls on GPU chips, Taiwan’s
EP 294 Timothy Clancy on an AI Cold War Read More »
Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey, picking up on a disagreement they had on Facebook about the teleology of the universe. They discuss Aristotle’s influence on the topic, Terrence Deacon’s work on naturalizing teleology, the distinction between purpose & goal-directed behavior, cosmic teleology, Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point,” Whitehead’s relational teleology, Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures,
EP 293 Brendan Graham Dempsey on Cosmic Teleology and Emergence Vectors Read More »
As they look upon the United States of America in 02025, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson see a country wrought by a half-century of failed governance. They see states and cities theoretically committed to progressive futures instead bogged down in labyrinthine mires of process and deliberation — a society stuck in low gear. Yet they
Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, Michael Pollan – Abundance Read More »
Artist and writer Molly Crabapple helps us retrieve the purpose of the artist – particularly in hard times. About Molly Crabapple: Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer whose inspirations include Toulouse Lautrec, Diego Rivera and Goya’s ‘The Disasters of War.’ She is the co-author of Brothers of the Gun, an illustrated collaboration with Syrian
We find ourselves in a pre-paradigmatic moment in which our technology has outpaced our theories of what to do with it. The task of philosophy today is to catch up. Benjamin Bratton is a Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at University of California, San Diego and the Director of Antikythera, an cross-disciplinary
Benjamin Bratton: A Philosophy of Planetary Computation Read More »
Jim talks with Emil Ejner Friis about political metamodernism and what comes after postmodernism. They discuss the “woke vacuum” & its failure to include common folks, psychosocial problems vs material challenges in Western countries, Jim’s pushback on postmodernism, Trump as the first postmodern president, personal vs institutional change, emotional states & leadership, late-stage financialized capitalism’s
EP 292 Emil Ejner Friis on Building a Listening Society Read More »
Stephen Heintz and Kim Stanley Robinson say we live in an “Age of Turbulence.” Looking around our geopolitical situation, it’s easy to see what they mean. Faced with the ever-growing threat of climate change, the looming potential breakdown of the post-01945 international order, and the ambiguous prospects of rapid technological changes in fields like AI,
Stephen Heintz & Kim Stanley Robinson – A Logic For The Future Read More »
Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes’ view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel’s bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was
EP 291 Jeff Sebo on Who Matters, What Matters, and Why Read More »
