In Episode 396 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Christine Rosen about her book, "Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World," which explores the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology and its effects on our experience of life as embodied human beings.

Christine is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on American history, society and culture, and technology and human behavior. Rosen is also a monthly columnist for Commentary Magazine, one of the cohosts of the popular Commentary Podcast.

Demetri and Christine spend the first hour of their conversation focused on the philosophical and moral questions that arise from our unreserved embrace of virtual realities and mediated experiences. They explore questions about the nature of reality, how embodiment shapes experience, and whether the virtualization of our lives is the natural progression of our interplay with technology or if it represents something fundamentally different and profoundly immoral about the world we are building.

In the second hour, Kofinas and Rosen discuss the effect that these technologies and the logic that animates them have on our sense of self, agency, and freedom. They explore how time spent inside virtual spaces hosted on large tech platforms may be contributing to the rising levels of depression, anxiety, antisociality, and other mental and personality disorders that we may or may not recognize in each other and in ourselves. They also discuss what can and should be done, both at an individual and societal level, to begin to address the problem.

You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 12/17/2024

What Happens When You Die

Teal Swan

Reflections on Death and Living Fully

The AI-powered Podcast Player