Thinking Ahead with Carter Phipps

Mariana Bozesan, author of Integral Investing: From Profit to Prosperity, has lived her life in several distinct worlds—from a childhood of painful poverty in communist Romania, to the technological optimism of Stanford and Silicon Valley, to the progressive business world of Germany and Europe where she found great success as an entrepreneur and investor. Perhaps it is that unique background and experience that has led her to has led to her to develop such a global and forward-looking perspective on business and investing—and also on life. Dr. Bozesan’s work and financial resources have allowed her to create the investment group AQAL Capital, named after the philosophical model of integral theorist Ken Wilber, who is one of her personal heroes. It is a model that she feels integrates the best of traditional investing and impact investing. She is an optimist, and her success speaks for itself, but I was particularly impressed with her commitment and passion, and also her willingness to explore a diversity of topics in what ended up being a robust, far-ranging dialogue. What future areas of innovation are giving her the most hope? What can Germany learn from the US and what can the US learn from Germany? Can the challenge of climate change be addressed with new technologies? What spiritual practice does she uses to revitalize herself and deepen her own inner universe? We explore all of this and more in this stimulating conversation about how to build a truly abundant future out the raw material of a difficult present.

How do we think about race in America today? This question continues to be core to the evolution of our national experiment. And it has come even further to the forefront in recent years, as the progressive social justice movement in American politics has gained more and more prominence. In this episode of the podcast, I was thrilled to be able to explore this subject with Greg Thomas—musician, intellectual, Integralist, journalist, spiritual practitioner, and co-founder of the Jazz Leadership Project. Greg, like myself, is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Evolution, and we share a deep appreciation for the wisdom of integral philosophy and the perspectives it offers on issues of culture, evolution, and history. But what I enjoyed so much about this conversation were the unique and different perspectives Greg brought to bear on the subject, both from his personal experience and his impressive and eclectic scholarship. Greg is an expert in the intellectual currents that have arisen around the art of Jazz—a tradition that is far outside my wheelhouse—and in this conversation we explore some of that history, covering writers like Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, and what Greg feels they can offer to the current conversation around race. Race has always been one of the most challenging and complex but also important topics for anyone trying to make sense of our national politics and where culture might be headed. I hope this episode may contribute, in some small way, to that conversation.

UFOs. Or to use the current in-vogue acronym, UAPs.  It’s a topic rife with conspiracies and strange complexities. Many people just want to avoid it altogether. But it’s also an explosive story, with huge implications. And it’s gained enough legitimacy that we need to pursue it--to pursue the truths that still lay hidden, to follow the facts and the data, even if it forces us into areas that are unexpected and challenging to our previous worldview. Most of all,  we need good researchers, thinkers, and investigators to help us do that. In this episode of Thinking Ahead, I welcome one of those investigators, Australian journalist and former 60 Minutes reporter Ross Coulthart, author of the new book In Plain Sight.  I appreciated the book's mix of investigative reporting, clear writing, and context setting for the lay reader, as well as new information and new sources.  In this fascinating interview, we cover the latest events in this fast-changing field, which has dramatically changed ever since The New York Times broke open the subject with its landmark article in 2017. With his sources deep in the US military, Coulthart is more than an observer of this unfolding story; he is driving it forward, with original information and reporting. I was thrilled to be able to pick his brain about the mysteries in our skies. 

Would you like to live a bit longer, maybe a lot longer? Do you think it’s possible? Do you think it will be possible in the future? In this episode of Thinking Ahead, I want to introduce you to an individual who believes strongly in the potential for human longevity, in the near term and long term. His name is Sergey Young and his new book is called The Science and Technology of Growing Young.Young is not a scientist or a researcher or even the founder of biotech company. He’s an investor—and specifically, an investor in startups working to increase longevity. He has formed several funds to invest in breakthroughs in the science and technology of aging. And that gives him a unique vantage point from which to observe and examine the many moonshots that are now underway to extend the human lifespan. But, as Young points out, the first rule of extending your lifespan is: don't die before your natural time—from accidents, mistakes, chronic disease, or bad choices. And so, any foray into longevity must include the means to be vital and healthy into our 90s. Then, we can consider the breakthroughs on the horizon in the next era of human development.What would mean if we found a way to live well beyond our existing natural lifespan? What are the ethical and social implications? Join Sergey and I for an exploration of the unprecedented human potentials that may ripple through society in the next century. 

For this episode, I’m happy to welcome back one of the first guests on this podcast, my longtime collaborator and cofounder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution, Steve McIntosh. Since that earlier conversation (which you can check out here) Steve has continued his work to bring what he has called a “post-progressive” perspective to the political sphere. Recently, that work has taken an important step forward with the launch of a new media portal, The Post-Progressive Post. This site, to which I’m proud to be a contributor, is designed to bring a fresh, new perspective to politics—one that is neither left, right, nor centrist. Indeed, it attempts to synthesize the best of all three of these political positions by integrating the cultural values from each of America’s three major worldviews: Progressivism, Modernism, and Traditionalism. The launch of this site made it a perfect moment to have Steve back on the podcast and dive deeper into what a post-progressive approach to politics and culture might look like.Here are a couple of links to items referenced in our conversation.George Packer, “The Four Americas,” The AtlanticSteve’s critique of Packer’s articleMy first article for the Post-Progressive Post:  “Who Wants to Skip the Civil War?”

Last year, in episode 3 of this podcast, I interviewed Eric Wargo, author of Time Loops. I had gotten to know Eric at a conference a few years earlier at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research. I was impressed by him and his ideas, and spent many hours talking with him. I find his theories about precognition, retrocausation, the nature of the brain, and the role of dreaming fascinating. They explain a lot of esoteric experiences and data that are often pushed aside by mainstream researchers. While Eric is pushing the boundaries of our theoretical models further than most, he is also a rigorous and serious thinker who speaks well to those who sympathize with his ideas but can also answer and engage his critics. I always enjoy talking with him, so when I realized his new book, Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self, was out, I thought it was time to get him back on the podcast.

What if the ethical challenge of our own time is not to have the courage to be a combatant for the last century's great causes, but to negotiate a much more complex set of moral issues, values, and worldviews? In this unique episode of Thinking Ahead, Carter reads his latest essay, written for The Post Progressive Post. Inspired by the recent movie A Call to Spy, Carter shares his reflections on America's troubled political landscape and weaves together polarization, Hollywood, World War 2, Sufism, and his own story. He calls for a new kind of heroism that transcends the archetypes of 20th century morality tales, a hero that can answer the ethical challenge of the 21st century.

Misinformation. Disinformation. Fake news. Conspiracy theories. These viruses of the information age proliferate with frightening speed on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, sometimes with serious consequences. Over the past few years, as the scope of the problem has become unavoidable, there has been much debate over how to deal with it, and increasing pressure to do so. Should government regulate these platforms? Should the tech companies regulate themselves? Or is there another way? Avi Tuschman, a silicon valley entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of psychometric AI, believes there is. Last year, he published a paper outlining a bold and creative proposal for creating a third-party reviewing system based on a website everyone knows and loves: Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as he points out, is a remarkable success. It’s accurate to an extraordinary degree. Research all over the world rely on it. And its success is due to a unique formula: a distributed group of non-employee volunteers who write and edit the information on the site and, in conjunction with AI processes, make sure it conforms to the site’s high standards. In his paper, entitled Rosenbaum’s Magical Entity: How to Reduce Misinformation on Social Media, he suggests that we should use “the same open-source, software mechanisms and safeguards that have successfully evolved on Wikipedia to enable the collaborative adjudication of verifiability.”It’s a proposal that potentially avoids many of the politically tricky consequences of getting government involved in regulating public platforms run by private companies. But how exactly would it work? Where does free speech come in? How much fact-checking do we want on our social media sites? And where do we draw the line between discourse that is merely unconventional and that which is outright conspiratorial? To unpack these questions and more, I invited Avi Tuschman to join me on Thinking Ahead for what turned out to be a thought-provoking conversation.

There are few people in the world of writers, musicians, artists, and celebrities who are instantly recognizable by just a single name. Oprah, Sting, Bruce, Beyonce—to name a few. Deepak falls into that rarefied category. Ever since he burst onto the progressive spiritual scene in the late eighties with his unique mix of health, wellness, science, spirituality, and celebrity, Deepak Chopra has been a cultural force—writing, speaking, debating, and generally making himself a constant presence in the media. Today, his name has become almost synonymous with “spiritual but not religious” subculture heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy and Indian spiritual thought. Indeed, Deepak himself, a former student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the Beatles' guru), has been one of the most articulate and consistent proponents of what we might call a modern, scientifically informed version of ancient Hindu mysticism. On this episode of Thinking Ahead, I speak with Deepak about his recent article—It’s Time Reality Got a Makeover—exploring the limits of scientific materialism. But we didn’t stop there.  In the end, we covered a lot of ground—materialism, idealism, consciousness, the brain, reality, psychedelics, UFOs, and even his own remaining life goals. Never at a loss for words or ideas, Deepak is unique thinker, and it was a pleasure to peer inside the mind of this spiritual icon.   

There is something about the American Southwest—long home to the Navajo (Diné) and the Utes and many other Native American tribes over the years—that stirs the soul, evoking our deep, mythopoetic imagination.  It is to this spiritually charged corner of the world that author Bill Plotkin, founder of the Animas Valley Institute, invites people to travel on unique and powerful journeys of what he calls “nature-based soul initiation.” These are not weekend workshops or Outward Bound adventures. They’re more serious, more transformative, and ultimately more life-altering. Ultimately, their purpose, as he explains in his recent book The Journey of Soul Initiation, is more than an experience; it’s a long-term metamorphosis of identity. Plotkin distinguishes his spiritual approach from what he calls “upper world” paths that emphasize transcendence and the discovery of universal truths. His path traverses the “underworld” of the individual soul uncovering its unique evolutionary “niche.” In his book, Plotkin suggests that it’s rare in our culture today for people to truly develop into the higher stages of adult maturity. Many get stuck in a type of adolescence or in-between state that has nothing to do with age. And those that do manage to make the journey often do so only by struggling through the territory on their own. There are few guides and fewer clear signposts to help us walk this very personal developmental path. Plotkin’s work seeks to change that—to provides guides and maps that can be of authentic help to people along on that sometimes lonely path of transformation. Plotkin, who refers to himself as a “psychologist gone wild” is perhaps best described as an endearing mashup of Carl Jung, eco-theologian Thomas Berry, and a revered elder. I enjoyed our conversation about his own journey, his work, and the challenges of deep, sustained, and soul-level transformation.