Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Asher Miller Meet Jack Welch, celebrated wrecker of real jobs and leading light of Wall Street wankers. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Meet Ray Kurzweil, who combines Moore’s Law with nanobots in a faux recipe to cheat death.
Meet Steven Pinker, whose denial of limits increases the likelihood of his worst fear: the end of the Enlightenment.
Season 5 of the Crazy Town podcast launches today, with a new theme to help maintain its laugh-so-you-don’t-cry sensibility: Phalse Prophets(TM).
Ecologists have been telling us that “small is beautiful” since the 1960s, but trends have gone in just the opposite direction, resulting in the flourishing of the Superorganism. Nobody designed this vast, intricate web of global interconnectedness, and no one can control it.
If we are indeed in an overshoot phase, we must do what we can to avert or minimize a die-off event.
Power is essential; without it, we would be literally powerless. But one can have too much of a good thing. How much power is enough? How much is too much?
With fossil fuels and electrification, and thus greater mobility and instant communications, we have indeed become a human “hive.”
Whether in family, school, work, or politics, we’re all immersed in the pathologies of power. If we’re lucky, we learn to navigate these waters without being harmed irreparably, and without harming others. Many are not so fortunate.
The power to communicate aesthetic pleasure and thereby to feel profound affinity with other people, including individuals of other species, propel human culture forward in ways that are hard to measure, but that are impossible to ignore. These are powers that provide hope for our future.
There are probably downsides to humans’ specialized powers (extreme intelligence, a highly developed ability to communicate, and proficient tool use). We humans tend to emphasize the advantages of these traits, but it’s always important to look for hidden costs.
Climate Sabotage with Tim DeChristopher (Season 3 – February 24, 2022) Stop Saving the Planet with Jenny Price (Season 3 – January 26, 2022) Holiday Guide for the Perplexed (Season 3 – December 15, 2021) It’s All Paradox with Douglas Rushkoff (Season 3 – November 24, 2021) Oceans of Knowledge with Sylvia Earle (Season 3 … Read more
