Episodes

  • ⏳🎨🔮 231 - Eric Wargo & J.F. Martel on Art as Precognition, Biblically-Accurate A.I., and How to Navigate Ruptures in Space-Time

    ⏳🎨🔮 231 - Eric Wargo & J.F. Martel on Art as Precognition, Biblically-Accurate A.I., and How to Navigate Ruptures in Space-Time
    Nov 21 2024
    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ Support & Participate• Become a patron on Substack (my preference) or Patreon (15% off annual memberships until 12/21 with the code 15OFF12)• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Original paintings available as thank-you gifts for large donors• Hire me as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Buy the books we discuss from Bookshop.org• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP and outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP, coda “You Don’t Have To Move → 8:33” from The Age of Reunion✨ About This EpisodeIn this penultimate episode of Future Fossils before we transform into Humans On The Loop, I bring two of my favorite guests and comrades in the so-called “Weirdosphere” back for their first-ever conversation together — and it’s a real banger! Probably the most inspired and provocative conversation I’ve ever had on the nature of time and human creativity.Joining me for this trialogue are Eric Wargo, author of From Nowhere: Artists, Writers, and the Precognitive Imagination (previously on FF episodes 117 and 171), and J.F. Martel, author of Reclaiming Art in The Age of Artifice and co-host (with Phil Ford) of Weird Studies podcast (previously on FF episodes 18, 71, 126, and 214). Our discussion centers on the concept of precognition — the ability to perceive future events — as the mechanism of all human creative activity. Both Eric and J.F. argue that art, like shamanistic practices, acts as a means of accessing and expressing precognitive experiences, often manifesting as seemingly coincidental events or uncanny correspondences between art and reality. We talk about the role of trauma and dissociation in stimulating creative breakthroughs — why there seems to be a direct biological and psychological link between suffering, displacement, and the discovery of radical new insights and modes of being. Can we create without destroying, or are rupture and connection one thing?We also examine how emerging media through the ages have shaped our experience of time. Starting with the earliest Paleolithic artifacts and the role of cave art in facilitating or encoding ecstatic experience, we trace the evolution of art through to how the development “the cut” in modern cinema led to new ideas of causality. Each new medium provides novel ways of thinking about leaps across space and time, and their study offers new points of entry into a unifying philosophy of rupture and discontinuity.Lastly, we explore some of my own most potent and disquieting precognitive experiences in light of Eric’s argument that the UFO phenomenon may actually be the braided precognitive experiences of future human beings and symbiotic artificial intelligences — a thesis that sheds new light on everything from the lives and work of Philip K. Dick, Jacques Vallée, Carl Jung, Andrei Tarkovsky, to The Book of Ezekiel.Where we’re going, we won’t need roads…Speaking of art, UFOs, psychedelic experience, and time machines, here’s the standalone music video for the song we discuss in this episode that was inspired by my UFO (or were they time machine) experiences in 2007. I threw it back in as a coda to the episode but in case you want to view it in its original resolution and in the context of the entire album, here you go. The “8:33” section starts around 3:58:✨ ChaptersChapter 1: Introduction (0:00:00)Chapter 2: Precognitive Imagination in the Arts (0:08:57)Chapter 3: The Personal is Precognitive (0:13:34)Chapter 4: The Cut and the Leap (0:22:15)Chapter 5: The Brain as a Fast-Forwarder (0:30:38)Chapter 6: Campfires, TVs, and Flickering Consciousness (0:38:57)Chapter 7: The Trauma of Truth (0:48:04)Chapter 8: Prophecy and The Trash Stratum (0:54:33)Chapter 9: UFOs as Time Machines, The Disappointment of Destiny (1:14:39)Chapter 10: Closing and News on Upcoming Releases (1:20:28)✨ Other MentionsAn inexhaustive list of people, places, and key works mentioned in this episode.* Morgan Robertson: Author of a novel that is believed to have predicted the sinking of the Titanic.* Hunter S. Thompson: Author and journalist.* William Shakespeare: Playwright who wrote Macbeth.* Comte de Lautréamont: A French poet who talked about "the cut" in his work.* Jean Epstein: Author of the book on the philosophy of cinema, The Intelligence of a Machine.* Carl Jung: Psychoanalyst who developed the concept of synchronicity.* Sergei Eisenstein: Filmmaker, and film theorist.* Gilles Deleuze: Philosopher who argued that “difference is more fundamental than identity.”* Cy Twombly: Artist whose work is discussed by Eric Wargo.* Andrei Tarkovsky: Filmmaker who wrote a diary entry quoted in From Nowhere....
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    1 hr and 33 mins
  • 🐦‍⬛🐙🖤 230 - Jamie Curcio on Living in Mythpunk, Eldritch Complexity, and Finding The Bright Side of Dark Ages

    🐦‍⬛🐙🖤 230 - Jamie Curcio on Living in Mythpunk, Eldritch Complexity, and Finding The Bright Side of Dark Ages
    Nov 14 2024
    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple PodcastsThis week I talk with Jamie Curcio to ask, whom do we serve? Who gives us power, and to whom do we give ours? Where does that power come from? To whom do we sell our stories?We explore the world behind the world, linking Jamie’s writing and game world-building in the domain he calls myth punk, and the equally Eldritch complex systems wicked problem of climate action.Studying that link, we can trace the outlines of emergent 21st Century religions — the reinterpretation of axial traditions suited to the digital era, the metamodern revival of land-based animistic traditions, and even weirder novel forms that arise at the end of one world and the effloresence of many others.✨ Jamie's LinksFallen Cycle Podcastmodernmythology.net“Investing In The Unknown”“The Cascade” Part 1, 2, 3Tales From When I Had A Face: B&W EditionTales From When I Had A Face info page✨ Offer Support + Join The Scene• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Invite me to work with you as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Tip me with @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP✨ Chapters1. Jamie's Background (0:05:46)2. Embracing the Unknown and the Role of Artifice (0:11:14) 3. Prometheus, Intentional Mystery, and the Nature of Agency (0:16:21)4. Introducing the Fallen Cycle and its Mythological Framework (0:21:57)5. Exploring Thematic Elements: Gods, Myths, and Consumerism (0:27:32)6. Climate Change, Hyperobjects, and Societal Inertia (0:33:36)7. Festivals, Dionysus, and the Value of Liminal Spaces (0:40:26)8. AI as a Creative Tool and Collaborator (0:46:05)9. Mythology, Role-Playing, and Enacting Change (0:52:16)10. Engaging with Jamie's Work and Final Thoughts (0:56:03)✨ Other MentionsFF 195 — A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher SipesA Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLandaJoseph CampbellFriedrich NietzscheArthur SchopenhauerBuddhismWestern EsotericismEvolving Media NetworkWeird Studies Podcast (with Jamie, with Michael)Tom MorganGilles Deleuze“The Soldier and The Hunchback” by Aleister CrowleyPrometheus (Movie)Alien Romulus (Movie)Eric WargoJohn KeatsUnweaving The Rainbow by Richard DawkinsFF 53 — A Very Xeno Christmas with Evan SnyderStephen BatchelorSamurai Jack (TV show)Fern Gully (Movie)Jitterbug Perfume by Tom RobbinsAmerican Gods by Neil GaimanSandman by Neil GaimanJosh SchreiHell by Timothy MortonThe Book of ExodusThe Demon-Haunted World by Carl SaganCyndi CoonDavid Bowie 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
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • 👾🖼️🏯 229 - Sara Phinn Huntley on Making A Field Guide to DMT Entities

    👾🖼️🏯 229 - Sara Phinn Huntley on Making A Field Guide to DMT Entities
    Oct 29 2024
    Subscribe, Rate, & Review Future Fossils on YouTube • Spotify • Apple PodcastsThis week on Future Fossils I welcome back Sara Phinn Huntley (help her fight cancer!), a multimedia artist, writer, and researcher who has spent the last two decades exploring the intersection of psychedelics, technology, and philosophy.An intrepid psychonaut and cartographer of hyperspace, her current focus involves using VR to represent visual/spatial imagination in real-time. Using a multidisciplinary approach, she documents and maps the states revealed by dimethyltriptamime and other psychedelics, cargo culting higher dimensional artifacts through the intersection of chaos mathematics, Islamic geometry, and 3D diagrammatic performance capture. Her work has been published by the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies and featured in Diana Reed Slattery's Xenolinguistics. She is the art director for The Illustrated Field to the DMT Entities with David Jay Brown (forthcoming at Inner Traditions, 2025).✨ Offer Support + Join The Scene• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Invite me to work with you as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Tip me with @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP✨ Main Points + Big Ideas* The Entanglement of Language and Being: DMT entities reveal a profound connection between language and the construction of reality, echoing themes found in esoteric traditions and the emergence of AI.* The Cartography of Hyperspace: The book serves as a guide to the vast and uncharted territory of DMT experiences, highlighting the challenge of classifying subjective encounters and the potential for mapping a multidimensional reality.* The Reproducibility Problem and the Power of Big Data: While acknowledging the inherent challenges of studying subjective experiences, we point to the potential of emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and large-scale data analysis to offer new insights.* Embodied Bias and the Nature of Evolution: The nonlinear and multidimensional nature of DMT experiences challenges our understanding of time, evolution, and even anatomy, prompting a re-evaluation of our assumptions about reality.* Attention as a Currency: We emphasize the importance of attention in navigating both the DMT space and the rapidly evolving technological landscape, posing critical questions about who or what deserves our focus.* The Question of Human Survival: The episode ends by urging humanity to confront its self-destructive tendencies and leverage its collective wisdom to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the future.✨ ChaptersChapter 1: Sara's Psychedelic Journey and the Genesis of the DMT Entities Field Guide (00:00:00 - 00:10:00)* Sara's fascination with DMT from a young age.* Her exploration of DMT through various artistic media, including performance art and xenolinguistics.* The inception of The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities book, inspired by classic field guides to nature.* The decision to leverage AI in the book's creation due to the vastness of the subject matter.Chapter 2: Language, Being, and the AI Oracle (00:10:00 - 00:20:00)* The role of language in shaping and interpreting DMT entities, drawing parallels to esoteric traditions like the concept of the Logos.* Sara's process of interacting with AI, describing it as "talking to it" to curate the visual representations of DMT entities.* The blurring of categories and the subjective nature of interpreting the raw data of DMT experiences.* The challenge of reconciling diverse and often conflicting perceptions of the same entities.* Language as a compression tool for expressing ineffable experiences.* The increasing relevance of AI in understanding consciousness, particularly with future advancements in brain modeling.Chapter 3: Navigating Ontological Shock and the Nature of DMT Entities (00:20:00 - 00:30:00)* The challenge of reconciling DMT experiences with our "meat space" understanding of reality.* Sara's personal experience of gaining knowledge through DMT, challenging James Kent's view on the limitations of such knowledge.* The neurological basis for some common DMT hallucinations and its implications for understanding the experience.* The interplay of cultural and personal projections in shaping DMT entity encounters.* Exploring the possibility of psychedelics as a way to interact with a simulated reality.* The existence of phenomena that defy current scientific ...
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • 🧬🕰️⚗️ 228 - William Sarill on Intuition in Science & The Physics of Philip K. Dick

    🧬🕰️⚗️ 228 - William Sarill on Intuition in Science & The Physics of Philip K. Dick
    Oct 11 2024
    This week we speak to multidisciplinary independent researcher William Sarill, whose life has traced a high-dimensional curve through biochemistry, art restoration, physics, and esotericism (and I’m stopping the list here but it goes on). Bill is one of the only people I know who has the scientific chops to understand and explain how to possibly unify thermodynamics with general relativity AND has gone swimming into the deep end of The Weird for long enough to develop an appreciation for its paradoxical profundities. He can also boast personal friendships with two of the greatest (and somewhat diametrically opposed) science fiction authors ever: Phil Dick and Isaac Asimov. In this conversation we start by exploring some of his discoveries and insights as an intuition-guided laboratory biomedical researcher and follow the river upstream into his synthesis of emerging theoretical frameworks that might make sense of PKD’s legendary VALIS experiences — the encounter with high strangeness that drove him to write The Exegesis, over a million words of effort to explain the deep structure of time and reality. It’s time for new ways to think about time! Enjoy…✨ Support This Work• Buy my brain for hourly consulting or advisory work on retainer• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP✨ Go DeeperBill's Academia.edu pageBill's talk at the PKD Film FestivalBill's profile for the Palo Alto Longevity PrizeBill's story on Facebook about his biochemistry researchBill in the FF Facebook group re: Simulation Theory, re: The Zero-Point Field, re: everything he's done that no one else has, re: how PKD predicted ChatGPT"If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others" by PKDThe Wyrd of the Early Earth: Cellular Pre-sense in the Primordial Soup by Eric WargoMy first and second interviews with William Irwin ThompsonMy lecture on biology, time, and myth from Oregon Eclipse Gathering 2017"I understand Philip K. Dick" by Terence McKennaWeird Studies on PKD and "The Trash Stratum" Part 1 & Part 2Weird Studies with Joshua Ramey on divination in scienceSparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People by Robert & Michele Root-BernsteinDiscovering by Robert Root-Bernstein“How geometry expresses the Second Law of Thermodynamics” by Chris Jeynes”Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience” by Neven et al.✨ MentionsPhilip K. Dick, Bruce Damer, Iain McGilchrist, Eric Wargo, Stu Kauffman, Michael Persinger, Alfred North Whitehead, Terence McKenna, Karl Friedrich, Mike Parker, Chris Jeynes, David Wolpert, Ivo Dinov, Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel, Erwin Schroedinger, Kaluza & Klein, Richard Feynman, Euclid, Hermann Minkowski, James Clerk Maxwell, The I Ching, St. Augustine, Stephen Hawking, Jim Hartle, Alexander Vilenkin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Timothy Morton, Futurama, The Wachowski Siblings, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leonard Euler, Paramahansa Yogananda, Alfred Korbzybski, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Claude Shannon, Ludwig Boltzmann, Carl Jung, Danny Jones, Mark Newman, Michael Lachmann, Cristopher Moore, Jessica Flack, Robert Root Bernstein, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming, Ruth Bernstein, Andres Gomez Emilsson, Diane Musho Hamilton 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
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    1 hr and 52 mins
  • 🎙️🖇️🕸️ 227 - MG + Tim Adalin of Voicecraft: Network Philosophy, Caring Organizations, & Wiser Innovation

    🎙️🖇️🕸️ 227 - MG + Tim Adalin of Voicecraft: Network Philosophy, Caring Organizations, & Wiser Innovation
    Sep 23 2024
    This week on Future Fossils, I meet with the wonderful Tim Adalin of Voicecraft. Watch us get to know each other a little bit better on a swapcast (his edit here) that throws a long loop around the world. Tim is precisely the kind of thoughtful investigator I love to encounter in conversation. Enjoy!✨ Support This Work• Buy my brain for hourly consulting or advisory work on retainer• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP✨ Takeaways* Wise innovation requires reconnecting with the purpose and mission of organizations and cultivating a field that allows for the ripening of ideas and contributions.* The tension between exploration and exploitation is a key consideration in navigating large networks and organizations.* Play, creativity, and the integration of holistic, playful, and noisy approaches are essential for innovation and problem-solving.* Deep and authentic relationships are crucial for effective communication and understanding in a world of information overload.* The need for wisdom to keep pace with technology is a pressing challenge in the modern world. Innovation is a crossroads between the need for integration and the obsession with novelty and productivity.* Different types of innovation are needed, and movement in one dimension is not equivalent to movement in another.* The erosion of values and the loss of context can occur when organizations prioritize innovation and novelty.* A tripartite regulatory structure, consisting of industry, art/culture/academia, and government, is necessary to prevent the exploitation of power asymmetries.* Small-scale governance processes and the importance of care and balance in innovation are key to a more sustainable and wise approach.✨ MentionsAlison Gopnik, Iain McGilchrist, Brian Arthur, Bruce Alderman, Andrew Dunn, Turquoise Sound, John Vervaeke, Naomi Klein, Erik Davis, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Mignano, Rimma Boshernitsan, Geoffrey West, Brian Enquist, Jim Brown, Elisa Mora, Chris Kempes, Manfred Laubichler, Annalee Newitz, Venkatesh Rao, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Nate Hagens, Yanis Varoufakis, Ferananda Ibarra, Josh Field, Michel Bauwens, John Pepper, Kevin Kelly, Gregory Landua, Sam Bowles, Wendy Carlin, Kevin Clark, Stuart Kauffman, Jordan Hall, William Irwin Thompson, Henry Andrews 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
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    1 hr and 30 mins
  • 📚🧐🦾 226 - Stephen Reid on Technological Metamodernism

    📚🧐🦾 226 - Stephen Reid on Technological Metamodernism
    Sep 10 2024
    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ About This EpisodeHow can we design virtuous technologies while acknowledging the complexity and unintended consequences of technological innovation?How can we foster curiosity, playfulness, and wonder in a world increasingly dominated by anxiety and technological determinism?This week on Future Fossils (as a teaser for the kind of conversations I am having for my upcoming spin-off Humans On The Loop), I meet with Stockholm-based transdisciplinary technologist, facilitator, complexity researcher, founder of The Psychedelic Society, and once upon a time the youngest-ever board member of Greenpeace UK, Stephen Reid to discuss the importance of taking a more values-driven approach to technology development. Stephen and I agree that it’s crucial to consider the potential consequences of technological advancements and to promote a more thoughtful approach to innovation…but for the sake of playing with tension, he places more of an emphasis on our capacity for axiological design whereas I feel more of a need to point out that the rapid evolution of technology can outpace our ability to predict its consequences, troubling efforts to design an enduringly sustainable future. One thing we agree on, and model in this episode, is the value of deeper conversations about the role of technology in society…and how to integrate their transformative potentials.PS — I’m guest lecturing for Stephen’s upcoming four-week course on Technological Metamodernism soon, along with Alexander Beiner and Hanzi Freinacht and Ellie Hain and Rufus Pollock. We'll engage critically with ideas like Daniel Schmachtenberger's axiological design and Vitalik Buterin's d/acc. As usual I'm probably the odd duck in this lineup, going hard on epistemic humility and the injunction of digital media to effect a transformation of the modern self-authoring ego into networked, permeable, transjective sub-agencies arising spontaneously and fluidly from fundamentally noncomputable interactions of rapid information flows... Anyway, the point is we'd love to have you join us and sink your teeth into these discussions! I absolutely promise to bring up voting cyborg ecotopes. Big thanks to Stephen for inviting me to play!PPS — Here is another really good, very different conversation between me and Stephen and Alistair Langer on Alistair’s show Catalyzing Radical Systems Change.(Editorial Correction: It was Mike Tyson, not Muhammad Ali, who said "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.")✨ Support This Work• Hire me as a consultant or advisor• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backers for Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Chapters(0:00:00-0:10:29) Stephen's Background and Interests in Technology and Metamodernism (0:10:29-0:18:03) Navigating the Complex Relationship Between Technology and Human Values (0:18:03-0:25:18) The Limits of Axiological Design and the Importance of Community Oversight (0:25:18-0:34:29) Defining and Defending Axiological Design (0:34:29-0:45:03) Exploring Alternative Governance Structures: Guilds and Rites of Passage (0:45:03-0:56:36) Vitalik Buterin's "Defensive Decentralized Accelerationism" (0:56:36-1:06:04) Integrating Humor and Recognizing Irony in the Technosphere(1:06:04-1:12:17) Recovering Awe, Curiosity, and Playfulness in a Tech-Saturated World (1:12:17- 1:12:56) Finding Lightness in the Face of Existential Questions (1:12:56-1:13:28) Exploring The Future and A Call to Action✨ MentionsIain McGilchrist, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Hanzi Freinacht, Josh Schrei, Ken Wilber, Vitalik Buterin, Bayo Akomolafe, Cory Doctorow, Nora Bateson, Dave Snowden, W. Brian Arthur, J. F. Martel, Stafford Beer, Rene Descartes, Bill Plotkin, Joe Edelman, Ellie Hain, Douglas Rushkoff, Robert Kegan, Aldous Huxley, Andrés Gomez Emilsson✨ Select Related Episodes (also available as a Spotify playlist)223 - Timothy Morton, 220 - Austin Wade-Smith219 - Joshua Schrei217 - Gregory Landua and Speaker John Ash214 - Megan Phipps, JF Martel, Phil Ford213 - Amber Case, Michael Zargham212 - Geoffrey West, Manfred Laubichler187 - Kevin Welch, David Hensley178 - Chris Ryan176 - Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, Sam Gandy174 - Evan Snyder172 - Tyson Yunkaporta166 - Anna Riedl165 - Kevin Kelly163 - Toby Kiers, Brandon Quittem141 - Nora Bateson122 - Magenta Ceiba109 - Bruce Damer094 - Mark Nelson086 - Onyx Ashanti080 - George Dvorsky076 - ...
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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • 🤰🏽🧐🕸️ 225 - Alyssa Allegretti on Sacred Domesticity and Hard Times in The Liminal Web

    🤰🏽🧐🕸️ 225 - Alyssa Allegretti on Sacred Domesticity and Hard Times in The Liminal Web
    Aug 23 2024
    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ About This EpisodeIf you’re wondering why this episode came later than I promised, well…look no further than the text and subtext of this very rich discussion: it ain’t easy being a scholar when your kids keep banging down the door. This week I speak with professional organizer, single mother, and badass independent public intellectual (in no specific order) Alyssa Allegretti (Website | Substack | Facebook) about making one’s way in the Wild West of the digital realm as someone balancing the seemingly-opposed responsibilities of parenthood and philosophy. Herein we discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital age, particularly for those navigating non-traditional career paths, parenthood, and the search for authentic connection.This conversation touches on the themes of invisible labor, particularly the often-unrecognized contributions of women and caregivers; the limitations of traditional institutions in recognizing and supporting diverse voices and lifestyles; and the importance of finding the sacred in the mundane aspects of daily life. We also grapple with the complexities of online communities, acknowledging both their potential for fostering connection and their tendency to amplify social divisions and reward performative behavior. Ultimately, my riffs with Alyssa underscore the importance of personal responsibility, self-awareness, and strong relationships in navigating the ever-evolving liminal zones of our metamorphic century.Enjoy, and thanks for listening!✨ Support This Work• Buy my brain for hourly consulting or advisory work on retainer• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP✨ Episode Breakdown (Provided by NotebookLM)Chapter 1: Introductions and Invisible Labor (0:00:00-0:10:01)Alyssa’s Background: Alyssa discusses her experience as a “Facebook Intellectual” and the limitations of traditional paths to intellectual and creative pursuits for women, particularly mothers.Sacred Domesticity: Alyssa introduces her work, which focuses on “sacred domesticity,” viewing housekeeping and homemaking as a microcosm of larger social issues and a valuable space for personal growth.Alyssa’s Work: Alyssa details her work as a professional organizer and house cleaner, emphasizing its therapeutic aspects, particularly for women and those struggling with executive functioning.Chapter 2: Marginalized Voices and the Liminal Web (0:10:01-0:20:00)Michael's Story: Michael shares his personal journey to becoming an independent scholar and the challenges of navigating financial instability while pursuing non-traditional intellectual work.Value of Marginalized Perspectives: Both speakers acknowledge the unique insights offered by individuals outside traditional academic and professional structures.The Liminal Web and Gender Imbalance: Alyssa recounts her experience with a perceived gender imbalance in online intellectual communities, using the “liminal web” as an example.Chapter 3: Work-Life Integration and Alternative Spaces (0:20:00 - 0:30:00)Motherhood and Intellectual Pursuits: Alyssa describes the difficulties of pursuing a career in intellectual fields as a young, single mother. She highlights the inherent unfriendliness of these spaces to parents and those with marginalized identities.Alternative Solutions: Alyssa argues that viable solutions for work-life integration are emerging in female and queer-dominated spaces, like the coaching industry, that prioritize alternative education and self-employment.Critique of Traditional Institutions: Alyssa critiques the inaccessibility of traditional academic institutions for individuals facing socioeconomic barriers, neurodiversity, and past trauma.Chapter 4: The Sacred in the Mundane (0:30:00-0:40:00)Domestic Realm and Personal Growth: Alyssa discusses the importance of recognizing the domestic realm as a legitimate space for personal growth and mental health support, regardless of gender.Blurring Boundaries: Alyssa highlights her efforts to integrate her work life and home life, finding inspiration in the mundane aspects of parenting and domesticity.Seeking Community and Authenticity: Alyssa expresses her grief over the separation between the “best parts of life” and her children. She desires more inclusive and accepting spaces where individuals can be their ...
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    1 hr and 45 mins
  • 🔍👁️🔮 224 - Helané Wahbeh of IONS on Arguments against Materialism and for New Theories of Consciousness

    🔍👁️🔮 224 - Helané Wahbeh of IONS on Arguments against Materialism and for New Theories of Consciousness
    Aug 6 2024
    Subscribe, Rate, & Review Future Fossils on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ About This EpisodeThis week on Future Fossils we speak with Helané Wahbeh (LinkedIn), Director of Research at The Institute of Noetic Sciences, adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Oregon Health & Science University, and author of over ninety peer-reviewed publications as well as the book The Science of Channeling. Our main course: a recent review in Frontiers of Psychology entitled, “What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models”. In this conversation we take a thirty-thousand foot view of the history and future of the science of consciousness, the socioeconomic impediments to unflinching consciousness research, and the overwhelming weight of transcultural experience that make this such a promising domain for fundamental investigation.Enjoy, and thanks for listening!✨ Support This Work• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP✨ Related EpisodesDig into an extensive back catalog of consciousness-research-flavored episodes (psi phenomena, non-ordinary states, psychedelic neuroscience, oracular praxes, time and consciousness, etc.) at the Future Fossils Consciousness Research Spotify playlist or through the following Substack links:03 Tony Vigorito05 Mitch Schultz20 Joanna Harcourt-Smith27 Niles Heckman and Rak Razam30 Becca Tarnas37 The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo45 Kerri Welch57 Conner Habib and Mitch Mignano58 Shane Mauss69 Tim Freke78 Archan Nair88 Dennis McKenna99 Erik Davis100 The Teafaerie103 Tricia Eastman112 Mitsuaki Chi113 Sean Esbjörn-Hargens117 Eric Wargo119 Jeremy Johnson124 Norman Katz125A Stuart Kauffman (patrons only)126 Phil Ford and J.F. Martel127 Cory Allen131 Jessica Nielson and Link Swanson132 Erik Davis150 Sean Esbjörn-Hargens156 Stuart Davis170 The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo171 Eric Wargo176 Sophie Strand and Richard Doyle and Sam Gandy179 Scout Wiley 186 Solo: A Manifesto for Weird Science218 Neil Theise222 Andrés Goméz Emilsson 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
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    59 mins