Humans On The Loop

 This week on Future Fossils, metamodern magick ritual artist, yogini, songwriter, and delicious weirdo Scout-Lieder Wiley and I ask: “How are you supposed to repair the darkness if you don’t own the darkness?” And we have much fun and profound exploration besides, into the performance of expertise, the virtue of naïveté, integral theory without the jargon, being unfinished, speaking the unspeakable, heyoka medicine, astrology, the enneagram, the tarot, hermes the scientist versus hermes the communicator, the “flaveregore”, a speculative science dao that can and will fund taboo research, how the street finds its own uses for things, time binding and prediction and tarot and algorithmic policing, the divine value of boredom, and more.Scout on Twitter | FacebookFind the COMPLETE show notes for this episode here.✨ Housekeeping• If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra podcasts each month, book club calls, and early access to new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have awesome conversations in our Discord Server & Facebook Group, which is going to convert to patrons-only in January 2022.• When you’d rather listen to music, follow me on Bandcamp or Spotify. (Here are my listening recommendations.)✨ Music by Michael Garfield• “Transparent,” “Always Catching Up,” “You Don’t Have To Move,” “Life Finds A Way,” “Hyperstition” from The Age of Reunion✨ Other ways to support the work that goes into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice | Hic Et Nunc | Mint Songs 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

The longest-incubated episode of Future Fossils ever! "Vanthropologist" Chris Ryan and I discuss his book, Civilized To Death: The Price of Progress, and the conflict between human beings and our institutions. What is the bright side of collapse? What syntheses of wilderness and culture can we foster in the years to come? This was a blast...✨ Housekeeping• If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra podcasts each month, book club calls, and early access to new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have awesome conversations in our Discord Server & Facebook Group, which is going to convert to patrons-only in January 2022.• When you’d rather listen to music, follow me on Bandcamp or Spotify. (Here are my listening recommendations.)✨ Music & Art by Michael Garfield• Intro music from the Martian Arts EP. • Outro music: "Seeing Like A State" available soon to Patreon and Bandcamp supporters.✨ Other ways to support the work that goes into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice | Hic Et Nunc | Mint Songs 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

Last autumn, as part of the Complexity Weekend hackathon, I hosted a live panel discussion with four unique and fascinating minds. We discussed archaeoacoustic design as a form of extended cognition, the continuity between the ancient and postmodern worlds, biomimicry, and many more interesting threads at the intersection of complex systems research and creative innovation.I’m doing this again tomorrow (11/14) for a panel on complex systems science and the evolution of Web3 — more info here. Hope you can join us!Dig into the complete show notes for this episode on Patreon. 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, in a powerful panel discussion at the Psilocybin Summit, we reflect on the lessons of magic mushrooms with three of the smartest, wisest trippers I’ve ever met: Penn State author and English professor Richard Doyle, Inner Traditions author and mythologist Sophie Strand, and Imperial College London ecologist and psychedelics researcher Sam Gandy.We talk about the history of the superb trip preparation algorithm “ecodelic,” how psychoactive plants and fungi are once again calling for the innovation of new language, and the urgency of helping people reconnect to the sacred wilderness that ecodelics reveal is not simply “outside.” It's brief but glorious.If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and leave a good review on Apple Podcasts!Dig up the full show notes at https://www.patreon.com/posts/58002643/. 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 I talk to philosopher C. Thi Nguyen (objectionable.net | @add_hawk) of the University of Utah, author of Games: Agency as Art and many fascinating papers on social knowledge and the psychology of games, transparency in society, and the philosophy of science — the very philosophical concerns with which I’m obsessed and to which I have devoted much of this show. I met him at Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute this July and immediately knew I had to have him on for what turned out to be one of my favorites yet. Get ready to unravel what you think you know about the ways you come to your decisions, allocate your trust, and sort the chaos of experience…Due to some inexplicable technical nonsense I can't add the full liner notes here, so please find extensive additional resources (including all of the papers, books, and podcasts we mention) at Patreon (where, by the way, your membership grants you extra podcasts each month, book club calls, and early access to new writing, art, and music).✨ Support the work that goes into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice✨ Music by Skytree“Navigator” & “Silmaril” off Infraplanetary 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're joined by robotics engineer, electronic music producer, and Future Fossils co-founder Evan “Skytree” Snyder — who has recently been asked to help design the sounds made by the next wave of Amazon warehouse robots. In this first part of our discussion, we explore the evolutionary and psychological considerations for designing human-compatible robot sounds, talk brilliant birds and their mimicry of people and machines, and riff on the manipulative utility of cuteness for both good and evil.In part two, available to Patreon supporters later this week, we talk about Evan’s work to reconstruct the soundscapes of The Age of Dinosaurs, his experiments with using radioactive mineral samples to control modular synthesizers, and his reflections on the use of sound for deep-time communication with future humans and/or extraterrestrials…✨ Go Deeper• If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra episodes each month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group.• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org.• For when you’d rather listen to music, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Related Reading• Set My Heart To Five by Simon Stephenson• Unfettered Journey by Gary Bengier• Alex & Ada by Jonathan Luna & Sarah Vaughn• The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule The Earth by Robin Hanson• “Smooth Operator: Tuning Robot Perception Through Artificial Movement Sound” by Frederic Anthony Robinson, Mari Velonaki, Oliver Bown• “The maintenance of vocal learning by gene–culture interaction: the cultural trap hypothesis” by Robert F. Lachlan and Peter J. B. Slater✨ Related Listening• FF 13 - Rupert Till on Ancient Audio & Future Ritual• FF 29 - Sara Huntley on Raising Robots Right• FF 53 - Evan Snyder on A Very Xeno Christmas!• FF 73 - Patricia Gray on BioMusic, The New Science of Our Musical Brains & Biosphere• FF 149 - Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, Naomi Most on Cultural Somatics & Ritual as Justice• FF 159 - Michael Dowd on Post Doom: Life After Accepting Climate Catastrophe✨ Music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder• “Telomere,” “Minas Gracia,” and “Sanitas” off Infraplanetary✨ Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation | Voice (available to non-crypto users) 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 I commune with psychedelic integration counselor Daniel ‘Sitaram Das’ Shankin, founder of Tam Integration and The Psilocybin Summit, in a soulful conversation on grace versus good works, taking multiple perspectives, being the kindest version of yourself (rather than the smartest), belief systems as spirit possessions, his journey from yoga teacher to psychedelic integration counselor, personality types as insurance strategies, the good, bad, and ugly of memes, and how to live with the worst parts of psychedelic capitalism.Learn more about Daniel at tamintegration.com, sitaramdas.com, Instagram, and Twitter.Get 10% off your ticket for the The Third Annual Psilocybin Summit (16-20 September 2021) and enjoy my live Future Fossils panel with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy — as well as presentations by dozens of other amazing contributors — at psilocybinsummit.com/garfield.✨ Housekeeping• If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra episodes each month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org• For when you’d rather listen to music, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Related Reading• “What the heck happened to Reality Sandwich?” by Faye Sakelladaris• Thread on suffering and coping strategies on my Facebook timeline• Thread on lateral thinking & creativity in the Future Fossils Facebook group✨ Related Listening• FF 58 - Shane Mauss on Psychonautic Adventures at The Edge of Genius and Madness• FF 63 - David Bronner on Psychedelics, Activism, and Trans-foam-ation• FF 88 - Dennis McKenna on Psychedelics as Scientific Instruments• FF 103 - Tricia Eastman on Facilitating Psychedelic Journeys to Recover from An Age of Epidemic Trauma• FF 112 - Mitsuaki Chi on Serving The Mushroom• FF 156 - Stuart Davis on Zen, Aliens, and Psychedelics• SolPurpose Conversations 2 - Richard Doyle on The Cloud of Unknowing• MG and Saj Razvi on MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy at BDYHAX 2018✨ Music by Michael Garfield• “Whispering At Night” & “Autonomous Zone” off House Ship On A Hill (2021)• “Tin Heart” off Double-Edged Sword (2007)✨ Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation 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 one of my favorite discoveries of the last few years, and someone I’m honored and delighted to know. I can hardly express how strange and exciting it was when I reached out to Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk and Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University, and found out he was already a fan of my podcasting…so this episode is a seriously chummy session of mutual discovery by two people perhaps already a little bit TOO familiar with one another’s work. Tyson inhabits an awesome position at the intersection of Indigenous knowledge systems, complexity science, cultural criticism, multimedia art and design, and dreaming and scheming on applications for ancient wisdom in the digital and post-digital eras.Check out the EXTENSIVE full liner notes at Patreon, where you can also support the show for extra episodes each month, invites to our book & film club, and new writing, art, and music. 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 welcome back anthropologist and science writer Eric Wargo, for a conversation about his book Precognitive Dreamwork and The Long Self — as well as: how tautology (not paradox) rules a time travel universe, what it means to become a time-faring species, the future of precognitive technologies, the concern of a quantum computing financial singularity, why lying to yourself about your own future-sight might be of evolutionary benefit, why retrocausalists don’t believe in randomness, how culture is a tesseract and dreams are future fossils, the controversy of divinatory astrology, and how pre-shocks of future traumas explain some of the more puzzling facts of history.✨ Housekeeping:If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get two extra episodes a month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org• Intro music: “Olympus Mons” by Michael Garfield | Outro music: “Otolith” by Skytree• For when you’d rather listen to music than conversation, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.• Thanks to Naomi Most for helping edit the first half of this episode! It isn’t easy work.If you like thinking about mind-expanding future technologies, I recommend you check out David Kelley’s WeFunder for a new human-AI symbiosis governance system that seems like it could shake things up in a good way. If you know people who like to fund tech projects, this one seems worth checking out. (David’s Transhumanity.net is a supporter of the show.)✨ Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation✨ Discussed:• ListeningFF 117 with Eric WargoFF 124 with Norman “Dr. Blue” KatzFF 150 with Sean Esbjörn-HargensFF 156 with Stuart DavisComplexity Episode 9 with Mirta Galesic• ReadingNPR - Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers SayNautilus - This Tenet Shows Time Travel May Be PossibleJohnjoe McFadden - Quantum EvolutionJonathan Zap - Crossing The Event HorizonJacques Vallee - The Invisible CollegeTed Chiang - Stories of your Life and OthersTed Chiang - ExhalationKurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse FiveTimothy Morton - HyperobjectsRussell Targ & Jean Houston - Limitless MindJessica Flack - “Coarse-Graining as a Downward Causation Mechanism”✨ Affiliate Links:• I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help edit transcripts for the Future Fossils book project, please email or DM me: Email | Twitter | Instagram)• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my new single. 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 episode is a true return to form, in which my old friend Michael Jacobs (aka The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo, aka Void Denizen) and I talk about pretty much everything — including plenty of things I honestly can’t believe I spoke about so freely.Every once in a rare while I have a discussion on Future Fossils that truly exemplifies the spirit in which this show was born — the truly omnivorous amateur enthusiasm that pervaded it before I started worrying about defining these investigations for an audience.Here is just a set of sampling slices from our most heartfelt and epic yarn, in which Michael talks about taking care of his father, who suffers Alzheimer’s; about getting back out of city life and onto the road in the American Southwest, communing with the landscape; about nonduality and artistry and memory and transpersonal somatics and their implications…It is an honor to meld with this guy, especially as my first not-exactly-post-pandemic, back-in-person podcast with a friend in the same room since God Knows When. Throughout this episode: he and I bat 1000 on the revelatory portmanteaus:The IcarOS, Genre Fluid, Vagabondage, The Industry and The Artistry, (my Dantien used to be a) Dantwienty, (and of course) The Transtempouroboros (tasty!).✨ Housekeeping:Come out as a future fossil on Patreon for another 25 minutes of this awesome conversation, plus two extra episodes a month, invites to our book club, new weird inspired essays, art and music that I labor on late night sometimes for months, and other things that help me share the wondrous inquiry. And please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts!• Discord Server | Facebook Group(Where people go to be weird enough to make it.)• Bookshop.org Future Fossils Reading List(Buy the books we talk about. You support local booksellers and I get a cut. Bezos gets nothing.)Episode edited by this tired guy right here. Theme music by Future Fossils co-host Evan “Skytree” Snyder.  For when you’d rather listen to music than conversation, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.✨ Discussed:“If time is circular, you can be behind the curve and ahead of the curve at the same time.”– MG[Topics]Life transformations; place-based spirituality; the praxis, challenge, and path of caregiving; knowing when it’s time to shake things up; time, loss, memory, the shedding of ego…realizing you’ve been forgotten; Improv vs. composition; genii loci; when the doer and the doing are the same; time travel in the music studio; the difference between emphasis on UFO craft or the aliens themselves; scrutinizing my UFO experiences as potentially “just” a social hallucinogenic placebo effect or accidental transpersonal charismatic gaslighting…[Listening]Michaelangelo on FF: 37, 101Bayo Akomolafe on Rune SoupSelf Portraits As Other People Episode 1 with LogaReincantations (theme of The Sentimental Centipede)Anthony Peake on Self Portraits As Other PeopleShea Hembrey at TED: How I Became 100 ArtistsJF Martel on FF: 18, 71, 126FF 150 on a Unifying Meta-Theory of UFOs and The WeirdMG on Aliens and ArtistsOn Dreams and Waking at the San Francisco Evolver Spore, April 2010FF 149 with Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, Naomi Most, Onyx AshantiFF 117 with Eric Wargo[Other People]Void Denizen, Stewart Brand, EOTO, Tyson Yunkaporta, Jeff Buckley, David Bowie, Ween, Mike Patton, Yeasayer, Ben Harper, Bo Burnham, eter and The Wolf[Reading]Michaelangelo’s Meowsoleum and new book, The He and She of ItMG’s The Evolution of Surveillance, Part 4: Augments and AmputeesMartin Nowak et al.’s The evolution of syntactic communication (paper)“Time binding” was coined by Alfred Horzybski (who also said, “The map is not the territory.”)Rolf Potts’ VagabondingDavid Eagleman’s SumArthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other DaysPola Olaixarac’s Dark ConstellationsDavid Abram, Becoming AnimalJohn C. Wright’s Count To A Trillion and The Golden AgePeter Watts’ BlindsightKurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse FiveAldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell[Viewing]Westworld, Constantine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Altered Carbon, Coco, Seven Pounds (re: organ transplants),Dark Crystal & Labyrinth (re: Brian Froud),Lucy with Scarlett Johannson (re: black goo),Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase✨ Products I Endorse:• I transcribe this show with help from Podscribe.ai — which I highly recommend to other podcasters. (If you’d like to help edit transcripts for the Future Fossils book project, please email or DM me: Email | Twitter | Instagram)• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I’m a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don’t wear it all the time, when I do it’s sober healthy drugs.• Musicians: let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I’ve ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my new single.✨ Support this show:• Venmo: @futurefossils• PayPal.me/michaelgarfield• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation 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