Team Human

On this week’s Team Human, we discover one of the reasons why knowing history matters. William Hogeland, author of Autumn of the Black Snake, tells the story of how and why the US Army was created - not to defend our borders, but to wipe out indigenous nations. And all that, in an effort to satisfy the growth mandate embedded in our economy by heroes of the neoliberal left like Alexander Hamilton. Make no mistake: Hogeland is a live wire.The show opens with a related monologue from Rushkoff about why successful businesses should refrain from scaling up. How about staying local, and letting other companies just copy your model? Why and how has the need to scale and colonize new territory become our default?Purchase Autumn of the Black Snake:  Indie Bound -or- AmazonRead more from Hogeland on the book here.Team Human is supported thanks to listeners. Visit teamhuman.fm to pledge your support. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human is Micah Sifry. Next month Micah will host the 2017 Personal Democracy Forum. On today’s show, Micah and Douglas discuss how the stakes are higher than ever for bringing people into an active civic life and engagement with democracy. Looking beyond the 2016 electoral postmortems and whodunits, Micah and Douglas talk about the power of humans breathing together–conspiring–in real space and time, while also leveraging technologies of connection, to build an actionable progressive agenda. Listeners of Team Human will find kindred spirits at the Personal Democracy Forum and Civic Hall. If you voted and you've been marching and calling your representatives but are still looking for ways to enhance your civic power and find community, PDF 2017 is ready for you. Personal Democracy Forum 2017, themed What We Do Now, will be held June 8-9 at the NYU Skirball Center, NYC. Team Human will be recording on location at this year’s PDF. Also check out Team Human Ep. 07 recorded at last year’s PDF featuring Institute For the Future’s Marina Gorbis and Douglas Rushkoff’s PDF keynote speech.Also on today's show, a monologue from Rushkoff about why so many of us have to drive to work. (Hint: it’s not because the world was created that way.)A special thanks goes out to listeners who are supporting and sustaining Team Human. Visit Teamhuman.fm for more info. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is musician Tessa Lena. Tessa's music explores the tension between technology and human agency. In her songs and in this interview, Tessa playfully challenges robotic conceptions of humanity. Tessa offers a compelling argument for power of music to call us out of those automatic, quantified notions of self and society.Both Lena and Rushkoff pose essential questions; Is technology being used to extend our human potential? Does the embedded economic agenda driving technology inevitably thwart ambitions that focus on people over profit?Tessa's brand new record Tessa Fights Robots serves as the launching point for a true Team Human conversation about the power of art, music, and play in an increasingly robotic society.Team Human is supported by listeners. A special thanks to our new supporters as well as all of our monthly sustainers who make each episode possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Pia Mancini. Pia is a visionary democracy activist who co-founded the Net Party in Argentina and DemocracyOS. Today Pia joins Douglas to talk about her new project Open Collective. Open Collective is platform that helps small, non-traditional organizations to collectivize, raise funds, and manage expenses in a networked and transparent fashion. Open Collective is a useful resource for listeners who are trying to build sustainable funding for their local community group, political organization, and even school club. Pia explains how Open Collectives not only is helping to fund a growing number of unique organizations, but signals a future where transparent, collective partnerships might foster new models of democratic participation and exchange of resources.Douglas begins today's show with a monologue on shame. How is shame used as an instrument of social control? Rushkoff advances a thesis on how open, transparent social organizing, like what is being fostered by Pia and Open Collective, counters shame and enhances our ability to forge solidarity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is author and Bloomberg Businessweek and New Yorker columnist David Sax. Sax’s latest book Revenge of the Analog, Real Things and Why They Matter explores the resurgence of the tactile, human-to-human, brick-and-mortar encounters that characterize the analog experience. How might our rekindled love of vinyl LPs, local book stores, and face-to-face interaction help reground society to the physical realities of land, labor, and our fellow humans? Sax and Rushkoff explore the real world experiences and “flesh and blood consequences" that lie just beyond the glow of our screens and mediated environments.In today’s show monologue, Rushkoff looks at the extreme political and policy binaries being pushed by the Trump administration. He argues for an embrace of liminal spaces; the continuous, ambiguous, and messy analog work of building peace in these turbulent times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today, memeticist and social change agent Laszlo Karafiath Ph.D.Laszlo, memetic engineer for Culture 2, shares his analysis of the weaponized media now paralyzing so much of our thought, and tells us what we have to do - collectively - to build our immunity to thought viruses. Together Karafiath and Rushkoff look at the ways we might redeploy memetic power to foster positive social change. You can learn more about Karafiath's work at www.purposeandplay.com or follow him on twitter.Also on today's show - Rushkoff on avoiding the rabbit holes of speculation and distraction in the context of war and the volatile Trump administration. How might we get back to the work of rebuilding society rather than being pulled deeper into the sensationalized narratives unfolding on our screens? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A unique episode of Team Human, on today's show Douglas Rushkoff is joined by longtime friend and counterculture legend R.U. Sirius (aka Ken Goffman), founding editor of Mondo 2000. R.U. will help us evaluate the place of the counterculture in the digital landscape. Is counterculture even possible today? Is humanity itself the counterculture as we resist increasingly quantified and abstracted lives? Together R.U. and Rushkoff playfully and thoughtfully examine these questions while asserting those quirky yet challenging expressions of humanity not so easily reduced to code or marketing demographics.The music on today's show comes from a variety of R.U. Sirius's musical projects. Visit https://rusirius.bandcamp.com/ to listen. Follow Sirius's work at https://stealthissingularity.com/. Musicians are encouraged to connect with R.U.Sirius to collaborate. Needle drops in this show:Glad-Handed I PoliticianPunching A Nazi Be My Valerie SolanisLove is the Product President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Bas van Abel. Bas is the founder of Fairphone, which began with the radical idea that technology should be built without exploiting human laborers and destroying the planet. Van Abel's experiment of building a "fair" phone has taken him around the world to witness first-hand the lives made invisible in the digital supply chain. Bas and Douglas talk about how putting people first requires both a redesign of economic systems and a reshaping of our individual perspectives as consumers in an age of hyper-materialism.Learn more about Fairphone here. Watch this VPRO documentary on producing the fairphoneOn today's opening monologue, Rushkoff on his weekend viewing of the Broadway sensation Hamilton and the tension between retreating into fantasy versus committing to fix our reality.Photos thanks to Fairphone's Flickr Photostream Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is media historian and theorist Caroline Jack. Caroline is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Data + Society Research Institute. In today's episode Caroline and Douglas explore how powerful people and institutions shape networked civic life through media and communications technology. Caroline has us think deeply and broadly about corporate personhood, imagined machines, epistemological chaos… in other words–media and persuasion.You can find more of Caroline Jack’s work on her Medium Blog including this recent piece entitled “What’s Propaganda Got To Do With It?”In today's monologue Rushkoff offers a thought-provoking take on the exhausting and overwhelming news cycle. Rather than be defeated by cynicism, how might we foster both internal coherence and focused collaborative action? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is digital media artist, activist, and filmmaker Alex Rivera. Known for his acclaimed 2008 feature film, Sleep Dealer, Rivera's work explores the contradictions of a free-flowing globalized economy and the simultaneous stigmatizing of immigrant laborers and erecting of border walls. Together, Rivera and Douglas Rushkoff interrogate the rhetoric of the digital "global village." We'll learn about what Rivera calls "Dronification," a highly connected, yet ever-more alienated digital subjectivity. Rivera and Rushkoff then discuss how we might restore true human connection and build bottom-up solidarity, or what the Zapatistas call "globalization from below."In today's intro monologue Rushkoff considers the need for both empowering local, grassroots organizing as well as fortifying public structures that bring the benefit of mutual aid and collectivity up to scale.This episode closes with a song from Team Human co-producer/editor Stephen Bartolomei, entitled Kill Floor Rebellion. It's a song "that celebrates border crossers and migrant workers, inspired by the true story of the Kill Floor Rebellion."Inspired by this episode? Check out the National Day Laborer Organizing Network for resources to get involved. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.