Humans On The Loop

Bruce Damer is a living legend and international man of mystery – specifically, the mystery of our cosmos, to which he’s devoted his life to exploring: the origins of life, simulating artificial life in computers, deriving amazing new plans for asteroid mining, and cultivating his ability to receive scientific inspiration from “endotripping” (in which he stimulates his brain’s own release of psychoactive compounds known to increase functional connectivity between brain regions). He’s about to work with Google to adapt his origins of life research to simulated models of the increasingly exciting hot springs origin hypothesis he’s been working on with Dave Deamer of UC Santa Cruz for the last several years. And he’s been traveling around the world experimenting with thermal pools, getting extremely close to actually creating new living systems in situ as evidence of their model. Not to mention his talks with numerous national and private space agencies to take the S.H.E.P.H.E.R.D. asteroid mining scheme into space to kickstart the division and reproduction of our biosphere among/between the stars…I find it amazing that anyone as potently psychedelic as Bruce gets the focused listening attention of audiences at NASA, Scientific American, Google, and numerous esteemed academic communities around the world. A late-career PhD who spent his early years designing software that changed the world and going on adventures with his dear friend Terence McKenna, talking to Bruce is an inspiration and reminder that the big questions really DO take the dedication of a lifetime – and that dedication DOES bear fruit.(Appropriately to the McKenna link, there were some connectivity issues during our call that stretched out Bruce’s voice in a way very reminiscent of the Shpongle grain delay remixes of Terence’s talks. I left these in because I think they’re funny and in keeping with the good doctor’s trippy ideas, but apologies regardless.)Bruce was the second guest of this show way back in Episode 4, but that was three years ago and his work (and my ability to discuss it with him) has developed considerably since then. Enjoy this high-level update about one of the deepest questions we have on the table, right now…the profound implications of this new model of life’s origins for everything from business and politics to the strategies for thriving through an age of worldwide turbulence and transition…Bruce’s Website:https://damer.comWe Discuss:• Updates on Bruce’s efforts to recreate the conditions of the original “progenote,” a living system before the invention of cells;• How modern life prevents a second “Genesis” from happening on the Earth;• Why life must have started in a wet-dry cycling pond, and not in the sea or on land;• The three properties of life: crowding/containment; networks; and information storage – or P,I,M: Probability, Interaction, Memory;• The origin of life as a niche-construction process;• The origin of life vs. the origin of individuality and competition – likelihood that started as integrated consortia, not free-living cells in resource conflict;• Scaling up the progenote origin of life hypothesis to human systems and the origins of human civilization with “social protocells”;• Does life require organic molecules, or is it primarily an informational process?• Are memes even a real thing? (Compared to genes, we can’t point to one…)• Working with Google to simulate the origins of life with a chemistry-modeling deep learning system;• The increasing evolvability of (some) genomes in ever-more complex environments leading to a transition from genetic to cultural inheritance;• How evolutionary networks can bump themselves off local fitness peaks and into novelty to prevent becoming over-adapted to tiny niches;• Cycles of federalism and fragmentation in both nature and society;• The possibility of a global plan to build sea walls – to make it an issue of national defense, and a better use of our time than border walls; • What can we learn from the origins of life about the future of planetary culture and the ongoing evolution of our “progenote planet?”SEE ALSO:Bruce on Future Fossils Podcast Episode 4:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossils/episodes/5a85dca3144c44bd2557158bMichael’s Version 1.0 Mind Map & Bibliography of research on major evolutionary transitions in self-organizing systems:https://www.patreon.com/posts/toward-new-1-0-24798022Evolution Evolving Conference:https://evolutionevolving.org/ 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 Nadja Oertelt – research scientist turned film-maker and founder of Massive Science, a science communication community that cares about restoring care to the storytelling of scientific discovery. Not only is the website wonderfully both rigorous and easy on the eye, the writing takes you on a journey. Clearly she and her colleagues are doing something right by teaching scientists it’s not just okay, but vital to the meaning-making of their work, to have a story and not just solutions.Here’s her amazing publication:https://massivesci.com/And an interview she did with Forbes:https://www.forbes.com/sites/catescottcampbell/2017/04/10/the-limit-does-not-exist-nadja-oertelt-has-a-massive-take-on-science/Super cool short film series Nadja did for HarvardX Neuroscience:https://vimeo.com/channels/972301 We Discuss:How working with scientists was a revelation into the social process of knowledge production and translation.Anna Wexler & DIY brain interfaces.http://www.annawexler.com/David Cox, Director MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ibm-David.D.CoxThe erasure of the subject in academic writing.Integral psychology and the application of psychometric information to the addressing of truth claims.How do psychedelics change the way we understand and practice science?Alex & Allyson Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.https://cosm.orghttps://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/technologists-of-attention-at-the-chapel-of-sacred-mirrorsThe Fundamentalism-Zen Continuum in the thermodynamics of computation.Creating a new neural ecology of science by including more kinds of people in the investigations.“We’re approaching some sort of memento mori for reality.”The “black box” of AI is not as big of a problem as the “black box” of why we feel the need to create these technologies in the first place.The human reality and personal sacrifices of science and knowledge production.The pain of becoming a storyteller for so many who have been trained as scientists.How social media has changed the subjectivity of young researchers.The importance of care in all of this.Allison Parrish - artist & programmer.https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/itp/853082171Irreversible Dictation: Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing & Science - Steven Meyerhttps://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=750This episode is backed by Mike Schwab of KnowYourMeme.com, a fascinating living document/community exploring memes and their effects. 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 Epiphany Jordan of Austin, Texas – a nurturing touch professional whose therapy sessions help triage the crisis of loneliness and touch-hunger facing billions of tech-immersed but intimacy-stranded people. In her new book, Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person’s Guide to Nurturing Human Touch, Epiphany explains how to get your basic touch needs met – consensually – outside of romantic relationship. In our conversation we talk about why this is such a widespread issue, how people are fumbling their attempts to connect with one another, and what to do about it.Her Website:nurturinghumantouch.comPrinted Book:amazon.com/gp/product/1732879206?pf_rd_p=c2945051-950f-485c-b4df-15aac5223b10&pf_rd_r=VGPWK0WEF50A2TD8YA3T  E-Book:amazon.com/Somebody-Hold-Me-Persons-Nurturing-ebook/dp/B07MM6FFBD/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=somebody+hold+me&qid=1550610978&s=gateway&sr=8-2Support Future Fossils on Patreon and get access to secret episodes, our sci fi book club, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the (lively, interesting) Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on any platform you desire: https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossilsWe Discuss:The internet has not replaced human intimacy; it has only convinced many of us that it can.“Because our culture identifies sex with touch, if you’re not in a romantic relationship, you’re not getting your touch needs met.”“Nonconsensual touch is like a starving person stealing a loaf of bread, or something.”When hugging someone is their worst nightmare. Is not wanting to be touched something that should or should not be seen through the lens of trauma-induced disorder?The future of getting touch needs met by nonpersons: heavy blankets, hugging machines, womb simulators, intimacy robots…Eliza Schlesinger’s Elder Millennial standup special and how women in their 30s start displacing mother impulses onto their pets.Why don’t we extend the same rights we give people to other nonhuman beings? (e.g., nonconsensual touch of animals…)Is professional cuddling a symptom of a tragic dehumanizing trend in the evolution of civilization?“Paleo-cuddling”Tips for effective, safe, consensual, non-sexual cuddling.The tribal joy of the pseudo-anonymity of cuddle puddles.The double-edged sword of oxytocin.Teaching touch to teenagers.Touch deprived, or touch illiterate? Multicultural societies and trouble navigating overlapping rules about intimacy.“Part of what I’m trying to do is have people write another story about what it means to be human and how humans treat them. There’s so much distrust and fear of other humans, and humans can be nice to each other, and kind and gentle and look out for each other. I think it can help us be more of a global village…” “I don’t want to be a part of the revolution unless it has to do with people being nice to each other.” 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 it's a deep dive into futurist Stowe Boyd's research on Social Scaling, Boundless Curiosity, Deep Generalists, Emergent Leadership, and other major features in the metamorphic landscape of the 21st Century workplace.We live in an age when our human cognitive limits are being tested against a proliferation of possibilities in the digital space – and we zealously rush into always-on internet work, open office co-working spaces, enormous distributed online collaborations, and other novelties that seem to be more about the infinite capacity of our electronic tools than the finite reality of our minds and bodies.Stowe Boyd has been studying and reporting on the future of work for over a decade, and his blog Work Futures is one of my cherished news sources for understanding how “we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Talking with him is a blast of cool reason and warm humor about the insanity of the modern work environment and the impossible demands that it makes on us – pointing toward more lucid, grounded, manageable, and yes productive new modes of labor in the dizzying technological milieus to come.Learn More:StoweBoyd.comWorkFutures.orgCheck out a recent edition of his Work Futures newsletter:https://workfutures.substack.com/p/work-futures-daily-the-human-springSupport Future Fossils on Patreon and get access to secret episodes, our sci fi book club, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Discuss:Invented the term “social tools” and founded the Work Futures blog.How do we live in an unstable landscape in which new platforms are constantly replacing the ones where we’ve established merit and earned currencies?The return of publishing to human scale as a response to ubiquitous weaponized advertising.Book: Douglas Rushkoff, Present ShockThe modern era of social networking isn’t about social concerns but business concerns…human curation returns to the fore in its primacy: newsletters, list management, etc.Why is it that certain tools and practices “work” for work, and some don’t?How certain ill-conceived collaboration software recreates the scaling problems of cruiseship tourism’s effects on local economies.Anywhere-ism and “The horrible sameness of the places we’re working these days”The paradox of blocking out open-office distractions with recordings of people talking in cafés.“If you want to be creative, turn the lights down. You are more creative if you have high ceilings and dark. So if you take all that away, which is usually what they do in open offices…”>>> Ten Work Skills for the Post-Normal EraLaszlo Bach at Google using a data-driven approach to correlate skills with work success…not Ivy League degrees, not ability to solve certain IQ test type problems…“BOUNDLESS CURIOSITY is the #1 skill for the future. The most creative people are insatiably curious. They want to know what works and why. And so that’s the skill you should seek. If you’re not naturally insatiably curious, then you should learn the techniques and skills involved with that and practice that so that you’re acting as if you’re insatiably curious, even though it’s a learned and not innate characteristic.”How curiosity leads to unexpected second-order insights in at-first “unrelated” areas.Bill Taylor, founder of Fast Company Magazine: four styles of leadership useful today.The leader as a learning zealot.The posthuman workplace: collaboration with radically other entities, be they AIs or transgenic persons.The future of work looks like freestyle chess.How and why to be a “deep generalist.”“There’s still a lot of the Bronze Age in how typical companies are run…Bronze Age thinking is still 70% of companies.”Emergent Leadership 21st Century Management, and Liquid Democracy.AI and technological unemployment – a kind of “tragedy of the commons” as we each try to do the best thing for our organizations and race to the bottom.Book: Amy Goldstein, JanesvilleThe collision of AI, climate change, and the collapse of globalist neoliberalism.Book: William Irwin Thompson, Evil and World Order“You have to start thinking about things at the watershed level. When you’re thinking about geography, it can’t just be the outlines of nation states, which are the remnants of old empires and other kinds of craziness. It has to have some logical relationship to the actual world, and that means city states, watersheds, and so on. And when you have that mindset and start to see through that lens, well, the desire of the Catalonian people to have their own state – it seems like an inexorable direction, and the notion that the EU is resisting that, fighting it, well…they’re fighting the future.”The end of trucking and the inevitable riots.Book: Project Hieroglyph, edited by Neal StephensonUsing science fiction instead of futurist scenarios to make different futures truly palpable.Three Visions of the future: Humania, Neo-Feudalistan, & “Just Horrible.”“You can’t talk about the future of work without talking about the future in general, and the future in general is not just more of what we have today. It’s certainly not what we had in 1970.”––Cover Image Photo Credit: (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com, bub.blicio.us 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 part two of the intense, bizarre, and wonderful roundtable conversation with The Hypermoderns – John David Ebert, Michael Aaron Kamins, and Mimetic Value/Ikkyu Sojun) where we discuss the puzzling connection between clowns and DMT; John’s voyage into the strange realm of mediumship; and Michael’s life-altering series of UFO encounters right after college. Among other things…The Guests:Michael Aaron Kaminshttps://twitter.com/michaelaaronkJohn David Eberthttps://twitter.com/johndavidebertIkkyu Sojunhttps://twitter.com/mimeticvalueSubscribe to Future Fossils on any platform you desire:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossilsSupport this show on Patreon. It’s good for you and makes you feel good:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Discuss:How everyone gets their own language once we invent the universal translator.Addressing the question of hyperspace “entities” from nonduality and landscape agency.Clown/Harlequin Theory in the psychedelic realm.JDE:“Now I don’t wanna do DMT. You’ve ruined it for me, because I don’t wanna see a clown.”Ikkyu:“Imagine Meow Wolf…but a thousand times more.”The Joker is a floating signifier.Ikkyu talks about an extremely potent and disturbing N,N-DMT trip.The Mantis-Clown connection, vis-a-vis Michael’s Peruvian ayahuasca experiences.The clown in Eastern philosophy as Lao Wonton, the childlike “crazy” old man in kung-fu movies.Michael’s ONE critique of William Irwin Thompson (hint: “Lindisfarne,” what’s in a name?).What is the difference between the techno-optimism of Buckminster Fuller and the techno-optimism of Peter Thiel, Peter Diamandis, and Jeff Bezos?Trump the Clown, the Magician, the Alchemical Fool.Ikkyu:“What if I were like Duncan Trussell or Joe Rogan but I interview ideas, rather than people?”JDE interviews Rudolf Steiner through a medium, Shruti Campbell. He tells us of his love affair with Steiner.JDE explains how he become convinced that there are in fact legit mediums who can communicate with dead people.The theme of confinement in world myth.Exoteric lab institution science and esoteric wilderness field prospecting discovery science.Michael goes into unprecedented detail about his UFO sightings in 2006.Sufjan Stevens’ song “Concerning the UFO Sighting…”Tucker Carlson interviews Nick Pope about UFOs.Book: Who Built The Moon?Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” music video (feat. Kate Bush)Michael’s eternalist/quantum-democracy theory of our self-fulfilling origins/histories.Dan Larimer vs. Vitalik Buterin on the limits of crypto-economic governance.The connections between alien abductions and shamanic initiations.Searching for metaphors complex enough to allow us to inhabit and dwell in hypermodernity.Carl JungCrowley’s Thoth TarotTimothy Morton’s HyperobjectsJames HillmanNassim TalebThe Flying Spaghetti MonsterRupert SheldrakeJohn C. WrightSam HarrisStephen HawkingErik DavisZechariah SitchinWestworld“The Moon” Tarot CardGreg Egan’s DistressFinnegans Wake - HCE (“Here Comes Everyone”)Blade Runner 2049Charles Stross’ AccelerandoJeff Noon (Vert & Pollen)Steven Greer & CE-5Jacques ValleeJ Allen Heinich (sp?)Prometheus & AtlasMircea Eliade 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 have a rad roundtable conversation with The Hypermoderns – John David Ebert, Michael Aaron Kamins, and Mimetic Value/Ikkyu Sojun) where we talk Snow Crash, Linguistic Entropy, and The Metaphysics of Video Games; spoil Meow Wolf and Annihilation (warning!); and go deep on the origins of Hypnotherapy and NLP. It’s just part one of an intense three-hour hoedown with some of the sharpest minds I know…The Guests in Order of Appearance:Michael Aaron Kaminshttps://twitter.com/michaelaaronkJohn David Eberthttps://twitter.com/johndavidebertIkkyu Sojunhttps://twitter.com/mimeticvalueSupport this show on Patreon. It’s good for you and makes you feel good:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Talk About:Michael Aaron Kamins:“Shigiro Miyamoto is the Dante of the Hypermodern Age.”Mario is a shaman, Link is Percival of the Round Table…NextNature.net, the Anthropocene, and the Wood Wide WebAre videogames more effective than books as a form of storytelling?John David Ebert likes Grand Theft Auto: “Video games aren’t the problem; they’re the SOLUTION to the problem of living in these bizarre cosmopolitan cities, these huge megalopolitan cities that we’re constantly stressed out by.”Narrative collapse in the shift from the serialized dramas of print-era TV and the reality shows of web-era TVMichael Aaron Kamins:“What does the hero’s journey mean in a world where we have to work 9-to-5 jobs?”Skeumorphism in digital spaces:Video games that mimic office life seem inevitable……but unlike in Snow Crash, we don’t want to walk everywhere in VR.Lists, Explosions, & FlowsWhy Michael Aaron Kamins disagrees with Daniel Pinchbeck about UFOs.If Jordan Peterson is our Confucius, who is our Lao Tzu?MG: “History is a thing that you make.”JDE:“We’ve lost the metaphysics. We have to bring back the metaphysics.”Why and how civilizations disintegrate.MG: “If you’re going to upload me, at least upload me in HD.”JDE: “It’s gotta get more fractal.”Meow Wolf is The Shimmer in AnnihilationArchangel Michael & Garuda, archetypes expressed across the world in time and landscapeMichael and Michael talk about the dragon fighting St. Michael meteor-dinosaur connection thing.Everybody tries to guess MG’s sign.Dr Blue aka Norman Katz, student of Milton EricksonJungian vs Ericksonian psychotherapy and the importance of combining the two.We talk smack on the sociopathic founders of NLP.Mimetic theory.Evolution, entropy, and the Tower of Babel.Shout-Outs:RadioLabDouglas RushkoffPac ManZelda: Breath of the WildCarl Jung’s Red BookNeal Stephenson’s Snow CrashGoogle GlassKevin KellyWilliam BurroughsMeow WolfRudolf Steiner“The Fighting Dinosaurs”Paleontologist Robert BakkerHouston Museum of Nature & ScienceTimothy LearyThe Fourth TurningHistory, Big History, and MetaHistory by SFI PressBeing John MalkovichGilles DeleuzePeter SloterdijkThe Joseph Campbell FoundationRobertson JeffersJon SteinbeckBuddha BombTimothy Morton’s HyperobjectsTom Hui Hu - A Prehistory of the CloudThe Square in the Tower by Neil FergusonThe Architects of the Internet Apologize - New Yorker MagazineJeff Van Der MeerTool & Alex GreyParvatiScott AdamsNLP 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

Happy holidays! This week’s guest Tricia Eastman helps people find the holiness in every day by facilitating legal ceremonies in which ordinary membranes in between the different areas of thought and non-thought relax, and new or somehow ancient greater selves emerge appear whatever.It’s a solid conversation with a fascinating person doing very crucial work. I hope you get as much from this dense hour of passage, insight, integration…Tricia’s Sites:psychedelicjourneys.cominstagram.com/psychedelicjourneysWe Discuss:How she became a plant medicine practitioner through the festival psychedelic harm reduction undergroundLeaving a husband, four houses, and all of her possessions to be of service to humanityOvercoming her severe, debilitating eating disorders with ibogaine, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO DMTHow to smuggle the sacred into the global shopping mallReviving the ecstatic mystery schools and other lost spiritual traditionsCoping with the aftermath of collectively “waking up in a burning house” as we make last-minute moves to steer the planet out of further catastrophe“A lot of the decisions that we make are based on false structures of safety, things that make you FEEL safe - like locking your door. Does locking your door really actually make you safe? If someone wants to get into your house, they’re going to get into your house. The truth is, we are all walking around with a lot of trauma. And if we can understand that that is actually an aspect of us, that it is NOT us, then we can get into a space where we can start interacting in a more peaceful way.”Bringing back the rites of passageMoving as a culture into responsibility for the decisions that we makeGrowing up in a Christian family while experiencing “entities”“I was like, ‘If I drink this bottle of wine, this ghost cannot f-ck with me.’ Until I started understanding was that all they wanted was to be shown to the light.”Metamodernist science takes on the psychedelic Other(s)A psychedelic facilitator’s advice on how to behave with ghostsThe gods and spirits as messages from the somatic unconsciousIntegrating indigenous practices into the modern worldReplacing hierarchical teacher-student models with networked and facilitated group learning models“We are the medicine. We don’t necessarily need to take medicine.”How do we come up with something better for a world of proliferating trauma than “Accredited Facilitator from Iboga University”?Shout-Outs To:The Zendo ProjectPlant Spirit HealingCafé GratitudeThe UDVRick Doblin & MAPSBurning ManPhilip K DickBlue aviansRudolf SteinerCarl JungTerence McKennaRichard Rudd * Gene KeysSupport this show on Patreon and come be in our book club! Also, tons of cool free music, art, etc. there: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 we sit with Bill Pfeiffer – deep ecologist, shamanic guide, and spiritual coach – whose life carried him from nuclear protests on the US East Coast to citizen diplomacy to Russia, where he first encountered Siberian shamans and became immersed, over decades and dozens of visits, in their traditions of ecstasy and communion, with realms and intelligences deeper than the world of identity and politics. A friend of Joanna Macy’s, founder of the Sacred Earth Network, and leader of hundreds of spiritual ecology workshops, Bill has dedicated his life to being a bridge between Native American & Siberian cultures, between alienated humans and the wisdom of the Earth, between heart and mind, future and past.https://billpfeiffer.org/biohttp://www.sacredearthnetwork.netSupport Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon to join our book club, access secret episodes, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldIn this episode, we discuss:Reconnecting to nature, to the bodyHow political activism for nuclear disarmament changed his whole life and perspective“I began to feel like I could make a difference…like you can make a difference…in how things play out here on Planet Earth.”How Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs was appropriated from the Blackfoot tipi, and what we lost in the translation“We’re all indigenous to land if we go back far enough in our ancestry, and we have a blueprint of a balanced existence.”“Mystical experience is a birthright, if we’re open to it, or grace is there for us.”Book: The American Replacement of Nature by William Irwin ThompsonHow can we differentiate healthy and unhealthy solutions to our human need for belonging?“There’s a lot of people who are spiritually inclined, and I’m like…I’m sorry, man, you gotta vote. It doesn’t mean you have to go crazy, it means you have to PAY ATTENTION.”His journey from citizen diplomacy to Siberian shamanism, through connecting Siberians to Native AmericansWhat he learned about being human from the SiberiansBook: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle“To reclaim our power is to reclaim ourselves as cosmic beings, not just beings. It’s that big.”“It’s not that I didn’t get rejected or that people weren’t angry with me at times, or copped an attitude because of what I was doing. But largely, I have felt embraced by both of those cultures as being a bridge, of serving a bridge-building function. I feel like I know how to love people, and how to receive love, and that is the currency that gets the job done.”Episode 60 with Sean Esbjörn HargensEpisode 65 with John David EbertThe possible revival of a circumpolar shamanic tradition in the latter 21st Century after global warming“I was an amateur futurist and then I just gave up, because there were far too many possibilities, and I was wasting my time getting afraid of imagining.”What did he learn from the Siberians that were not lessons living in the Native American legacy he encountered?“The relative success that me and my cohorts have had with native people is all about listening and respect. If that’s cliche, I want more of it.”The ongoing resurrection of Native American ecstatic traditionsBook: Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler & Jamie WhealJoanna MacyHow to co-opt ecstasy for money, and how not toOne of Michael’s craziest sober experiences everConscious sexualityAnd more…Subscribe to Future Fossils on any podcasting platform:https://shows.pippa.io/futurefossilsJoin our (very active, awesome) Facebook Discussion 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's guests are two of the most limber and insightful minds I know, futurist Michelle Shevin and actor-artist "The Ungoogleable" Michaelangelo. Since this is episode one of a whole new hundred episodes – and since I'm a sucker for ceremony and round numbers – this week we're taking a whirlwind tour of this show's recurring themes: how life, mind, culture, psychology, art, and science all change in the Internet Age, and how to live the best lives that we can amidst these transformations...Support the show for exclusive episodes, music, a book club, and more:patreon.com/michaelgarfieldMichelle Shevinmedium.com/@micheboxMichaelangelovoidandimagination.comWe Discuss:• Kronos & Kairos, revisited• Re: JF Martel – Episodes 18 & 71 • The information science of innovation and why Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero may not be TOTAL hogwash• Book: Geoff West - Scale• Re: “An Oral History of the End of ‘Reality’” – Episode 91 • IS our time unique at all?• WJT Mitchell paraphrase: “We’re all constantly feeling as though everything is about to happen, or perhaps it already has and we just haven’t noticed it”• #presentshock• Did we miss the singularity?• Trapped in the present• MA: “chronopractic adjustments” of pulling your past and future into alignment• MA: “I feel like all expression is a form of deception…I try to look to the deception closest to the truth.”• Plato: “Writing is a step backward from Truth.”• Biological evolution as machine learning and the domestication of humans by technology• MA: “I took a hit of GPS / got lost within the endlessness / gave up the compass in my chest / and oriented to the West”• Michaelangelo – Episode 37 • Evolution’s bias toward paedomorphy / neoteny• MS: “What happens when DNA becomes the substrate for all this information?”• Storing data in the organic cloud• The zone of proximal evolution and how “We can’t invent what we don’t have the parts lying around for”• Every new technology is a remix• David Krakauer – Episode 75 • Dennis McKenna - Episode 88 • Toxoplasmosis mind control and how nobody actually things if “my brain made me do it”• MS: “If we are midwives to new myths, then part of the project is to litter the landscape with the right raw material, so that in the future, the right raw material is just lying around for people to pick up and build the tools with.”• MA: “meme-ifying” (vs. “mummifying”)• Book: Sam Harris – Free Will• Film: Upstream Color• Film: Primer• Book: Peter Watts – Blindsight• Book: Peter Watts – Echopraxia• Re: The Teafaerie – Episode 100 • Re: Erik Davis – Episode 99 • Re: Doug Rushkoff – Episode 67 • Weird Studies Podcast is amazing, their Episode 32 on Eyes Wide Shut• MG: “At the dusk of civilization, our eyes are adjusting to the darkness.”• The digital dark age• Book: Stewart Brand – The Clock of the Long Now• Richard Doyle on Philip K. Dick and the evolutionary arms race of cameras and blind spots leading inexorably toward paranoia and then beyond into metanoia (see also, “The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast”)• An entropy-driven metabolic arms race inevitab fractal Argus, coated in eyes• When it comes to living through a Dark Age, MA suggests, “I think it comes down to learning how to glow in the dark. The agents of deception are our greatest teachers, in that sense.”• MA: “Increased surveillance creates more performative personalities.”• Re: Mitch Mignano – Episodes 57 & 98 • Elon Musk on Joe Rogan (of course that guy believes in simulation theory)• Song: Yeasayer’s “Under The Glass of the Microscope”• Linear, Circular, Helical time• MS: “Planning often disguises itself as prediction”• What is causation, anyway?• Possibility as a fractal branching lightning bolt from potential to actual• MA: “Scrye-ogenic Future” in a crystalline model of time• MA: synchronicities vs. “synchroniceties”• Book: Julian Jaynes – The Bicameral Mind• Daniel Dennett’s “software archeology”• The origins of divination• Morsels of bicamerality reinstated by our digital ecology, with someone’s agenda in it• MS: “The arrogance is in thinking that it was only ever us.”• The Neurological Explanation for Imaginary Friends• The Microbiological Explanation for “Self-Transforming Machine Elves”• Swing Low, Eukaryote, coming for to carry me home• David Pearce – “The Antispeciesist Manifesto”• Are Laboratory Burgers Vegan?• Empathy is a human (but not uniquely human) super power• Rebranding the human species (eg, “Dog Friends,” “Cat Friends”)• Book: Alejandro Jodorowsky - Where The Bird Sings Best• Expertise is knowing the right search terms• DNA as a language; microbial ecology as a language• Introspection as an escape hatch from history and “profane time”• And more... 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 The Teafaerie, my amazing friend and a true one-of-a-kind psychedelic superhero.The Teafaerie writes stories, poems, movies, plays and essays, makes videos, organizes flash mobs, and is one of the founders of Prometheatrics, a big beautiful Esplanade camp at Burning Man. At various times she has been a writer, nanny, actress, flow arts teacher, childbirth doula, homeless person, aid worker, live-action storyteller, toy inventor, app designer, street performer, and party promoter. She is a frequent contributor to the worlds most excellent psychedelic information site Erowid.org. She also regularly volunteers as a festival trip sitter with the Zendo Project and RGX medical.Her most recent essay on Erowid:https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/2016/05/17/mapping-the-source/My favorite of her essays:https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/page/18/More about psychedelic harm reduction:https://www.zendoproject.org/We Discuss:Why it’s okay that the Elon Musk will get (to beta-test) immortality first (for the rest of us)The intimately cybernetic world of brain-machine interfaces and Life After Advertising“I’m just a coward. I TRIED despair and I can’t TAKE that shit.”How parenthood changes your decision to be or not to be an optimist.Simulation Theory~ ”We need to stop stressing the system and offload our consciousness offworld to L5 or VR”…or is that some whack pseudognostic transmania?“I believe the universe is art, because…”We’re the children of god, but most people act like we’re the pets of god or the toys of god.The child of a sheep grows up to be a sheep. The child of a god grows up to be a god.Mass manifestation and the Global Consciousness ProjectHow to make wishes come true by getting god’s attentionPartner yoga for engineered miraclesBurning Man is a manifestation engineWhat Are You Playing For?What evolution looks like to DNADesigner Babies & THE ETHICS OF Designer Babies“Do you know The Silmarillion?”Olaf Stapledon is the manBlack Mirror’s episode “Black Museum”Autonomous by Annalee Newitz and robot AR architectureGreg Egan’s Permutation City (and Diaspora)“Any sufficiently advanced 3D printer could tattoo you.”~ “If the universe is determined, it’s offensive to me, it devalues my art.”Getting your wishes fulfilled is of evolutionary benefitHow many things had to go right? ALL of them.“Maybe THIS is the shortest path, and it’s JUST LONG.”5-Meo DMTThe burden of publishing to an enormous audience on ErowidFangirling about my sci fi, “An Oral History of the End of ‘Reality’” (Episode 91)Future Fossils Podcast is starting a book club for mind-blowing sci fi! Learn more and sign up: https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe to this show on any platform you desire:https://shows.pippa.io/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