Future Fossils

Support Future Fossils on Patreon Subscribe to Future Fossils on iTunesSubscribe to Future Fossils on StitcherJoin the Future Fossils Facebook Group “I think we’re at a real crossroads. I’m an old guy, I may not live to see a whole lot more of the changes that are undoubtedly going to happen, but I would sure like to. I try to be an optimist. I’d like to hope that through education and science and clear thinking and good communication we come to sort of a passive understanding of the stuff we need to do – rather than having any ‘conspiracy’ organizations shoving it down everybody’s throats. We can have creativity and BETTER lives, rather than just more and more and more.” This week our guest is visionary artist Mark Henson, whose highly detailed and frequently erotic landscape paintings portray the full spectrum of human experience, our greatest dreams and most disturbing nightmares. Mark’s been a friend and elder to me since we met in 2010 and I was delighted to catch up with him at this year’s Psychedelic S

“I would love to see a world where 100% of the people on this planet, and all the other beings, believe their life is WAY worth living. Not just kinda okay, even, but WAY worth living.” This week’s guest is Mitch Altman, a hacker and electronics scientist whose life is the stuff of legend (here's his Wikipedia entry).Founder of Cornfield Electronics (“We Make Useful Electronics for a Better World”), co-founder of Noisebridge (epic hackerspace in San Francisco), inventor of TV-B-Gone.This episode’s title is pulled from Mitch’s talk by a similar name. In this Episode: Living in alignment with your dreams, working for yourself. Entrepreneurship as serving your own sense of the awesome and letting the resonant audience come to your own articulated personal meaning.The potential of full-cost accounting: how weaving every invisible cost (“ecosystem services,” mothering, etc.) into the economy could transform selfish behavior into good for all.Self-discovery and finding the place where your enjoyment and passion mee

New essays, music, talks, and writing coming soon for my Patreon supporters! Subscribe here and get everything I do for free if you haven’t already…This week our guest is Becca Tarnas, whom I caught up with at the 2017 MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference in Oakland.Becca’s Websitehttps://beccatarnas.com/about/Archai Journal: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmologyhttp://www.archai.org/“Everything breathes together.” - PlotinusWe discussed:The imminent shift into an archetypal paradigm, in which we transcend naïve subject-object dualism and experience meaning as not merely something manufactured by the brain…Uranus-Pluto Alignments in the 1960s & the 2010sJupiter joining the revolution in 2016-2017 and magnifying thingsWhat will the world be like after all this revolutionary energy runs its course?Impending collective shadow work in our inherently psychedelic future circa Saturn-Pluto Conjunction, 2018-2021 (ish)How do we hold to our centers in a storm of history?How do you deal with knowing that most of your

(New essays, music, talks, and writing coming soon for my Patreon supporters! Subscribe here and get everything I do for free if you haven’t already…)This week we chat with Sara Huntley – Dancer, Graphic Novelist, Tattoo Artist, Clown, and Psychedelic Futurist. Buckle Up!Sara’s Website: http://sarahuntley.weebly.com/Sara on FB: https://www.facebook.com/huntley.saraA conversation on New Media & The Future of Storytelling, the Ethics of Digital Entities, and Treating Bots With Kindness. >>> Topics:What will the future BE like? Not just what will it LOOK like.With books, the story is revised with every printing, but oral traditions allow for the story to evolve with every telling. Virtual reality is opera – in that it contains all forms that came before it – but it’s opera tied into attention-tracking systems that can re-weave worlds and narratives in real-time as you interact with it.We’re going to be able to get inside our data, to LARP the user-generated, annotated maps of the terrains that we in

(New essays , music , coloring book pages, and recorded talks coming soon for my supporters! Sign up on Patreon if you haven't already...)“You cannot change the present system. This thing is dying, it’s structurally unsustainable. And so to try to somehow fix the present system is just a waste of time. Don’t waste your time on the present system. We have to start working on building the new world.” – John PetersenThis week we welcome futurist John Petersen of The Arlington Institute into the digital archives, for a challenging and visionary chat about how wrong we’re guaranteed to be about the future – and what we CAN expect about the new paradigm (which is coming sooner than you might suspect)…John Petersen started as an engineer before advising the military and White House, and has spent decades as a high-level consultant for emergent technologies and social trends. What he’s learned is that the future emerges at the edges of the known – that it will be, to paraphrase JBS Haldane, “not stranger than we imag

This week I sit down with Rak Razam and Niles Heckman – psychonauts, journalists, provocateurs, and the film-makers responsible for Shamans of the Global Village.http://www.shamansoftheglobalvillage.com/In a conversation too full of awesome neologisms, delightful turns of phrase, one-liners, and weird genius for me to convey it all, we talk about the role of creative media in helping usher in new modes of human consciousness – and what we’re learning those new modes might be. We finally get into WHAT those unborn archeologists listening to Future Fossils might be like…and our conjecture’s going to surprise you.Books we Reference: (Links are through my Amazon Affiliate account – if you buy any of these books, I get a small percentage of the sale at no cost to you. Or you can bookmark this link to the Amazon Homepage and they'll send me a tiny cut of anything you purchase.) Octavio Rettig – The Toad of DawnGabor Maté – In the Realm of Hungry GhostsSteve Kotler & Jamie Wheal – Stealing Fire: How Silicon Vall

Help crowd-sponsor Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon and score subscriber-only perks and exclusive extra content!This week we chat with science journalist Jessa Gamble, author of The Siesta and The Midnight Sun: How Our Bodies Experience Time, about time in the body, circadian rhythms, lunar cycles, and the science of sleep.– Topics We Discuss:• Cultural dimensions of human communities at different latitudes;• Organic human rhythms versus high-frequency trading algorithm digital rhythms;• The evolutionary history of circadian rhythms and sleep;• What are we going to do when we settle on other planets with days of different lengths? (Like Mars, with a 24 hour and 25 minute day…)• NASA scientists trying (and failing) to live on Earth on Martian time;• The natural history of biphasic human sleep and the (VERY RECENT) cultural construction of the “8 hour night”;• How the lengths of our circadian cycles actually differ from person to person;• The ethical complexities and possible social consequences of research in

This week we're joined by Daniel Rozenberg aka DADARA for a thoughtful discussion about Art in Virtual Realities, Information Overload, and Flow States. The creator of Exchangibition Bank, Like4Real, and the upcoming Solipmission installation at Burning Man, as well as countless concert posters and album covers, DADARA has been one of my favorite artists for a while - in no small part because of how his works combine deep, challenging investigations with light-hearted play.  Click here to learn more about the Indiegogo Campaign for Solipmission We discuss his work's overarching philosophical explorations and our age of proliferating realities… • The breakdown of narrative and consensus reality in the virtual spaces of new media; • Virtual Reality as the new frontier, now that we’ve mapped the surface of the planet – and the potential problems of considering a space a “frontier” (especially if it is already inhabited); • The twin archetypes of the “Black Box” and the “Tabula Rasa” as they appear in science fic

This week we chat with Daniel Zen, former Google engineer, technology instructor at zen.digital, NYC Regional Coordinator for Burning Man, coordinator for the Angular.js NYC Meetup, and general high-tech wizard. https://zen.digital/https://twitter.com/danielzenhttps://medium.com/@danielzenhttps://github.com/danielzen Some of the topics we discuss:• The curses – and blessings! – of runaway technological surveillance (and sousveillance, and coveillance…).• How adolescence and sexuality have changed for children growing up with the Internet.• The future of festival culture and how it is a testbed for disaster relief technologies.• The danger of putting your medical devices online (the hackability of the Internet of Things)• What happens when we RECORD EVERYTHING• The isolating effects of Virtual Reality and how to create interactive spaces that allow us to share in the experience.• The collapse of VR, AR, and MR into just: “reality”• How TV, digital photography, and streaming video has changed the way we think a

We’re switching it up this week to present my recent talk on psychedelic futurism at the first weekly meeting of the Australian Psychedelic Society (Fitzroy Beer Garden, Melbourne, Victoria).The Chinese have a curse: “May you live in interesting times.” The Irish have a toast: “May you be alive at the end of the world” I’m more Irish than Chinese, and I know this because even though we’re living through total chaos these days, that means unprecedented opportunity for wonder, creativity, discovery, and growth. - How to enjoy life in an age of mass extinction and the imminent transformation of the human species through genetic engineering- CRISPR and evolution “in real time,” within the lifespan of “individual” organisms- The self as a multitude of distinct neural “motifs” and how each of us is a village (or a bouquet)- Living through “a trans-technological, trans-nature” renaissance- The sharing economy, nonmonogamy, global citizenship, access vs. ownership as symptoms of a global transition to more freely exc

This week’s guest is travel guide Simon Yugler – named one of Open World Magazine’s “Top 30 Adventurers Under 30,” Simon facilitates initiatory experiences as the leader of experiential education journeys for young adults.http://travel-alchemy.comHere’s Simon talking to UpliftConnect about the difference between “wanting to help” and “wanting to be of service”:https://youtu.be/JzIwXy4l4lY - “What cultural exchange looks like from a place of transformation and healing.”- Decolonizing Festival Culture.- Right Relationship & the difference between “Citizen Diplomacy” & “Mission Work.”- What it means to be a respectful guest.- The difference between tourists and locals: tourists look up (novelty and wonder).- What travel has to teach us about navigating our turbulent and transformational age.- How rootless modern people (digital nomads, refugees, wandering Jews, and so on) can reconnect with a sense of place and become a “person of place.”- How to RECEIVE people with respect and be a good host for travele

This week’s guest is the artist, gallery owner, podcaster, web designer, and musician Aunia Kahn! Among her many notable achievements, she curates Alexi Era Gallery in Oregon, hosted the Create & Inspire Podcast, and survived eleven years housebound with disability to emerge more creative, passionate, and powerful than before.http://auniakahn.comhttp://alexieragallery.comIn one of this podcast’s more rambling conversations, we discuss:- Internet & Cellphone Addiction (and the problem of “gameifying” everything to seize attention).- How the internet has changed the ways we present ourselves to one another online, splintered our identities, and changed our sense of time…- Using technology (especially social media) instead of letting technology use you.- Comparing the Internet and Organized Religion, and how institutions serve the role of “tigers” in the modern “jungle” of society.- Looking at the historical context of disability and the relative nature of contemporary problems.- How disease can shock us

This week, we spend some time with Joanna Harcourt-Smith, "Swiss-born British socialite," host of the Future Primitive Podcast, and author of Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story.Michael on Joanna’s 500+ Episode Podcast: http://www.futureprimitive.org/2016/11/the-crossroads-of-the-unexpected/Check out her archives. They’re amazing."God IS A Sense of Humor""Know That You're Everything"“To me, people are mushrooms. My claim to fame was the fact that I found the mushroom Timothy Leary in the forest. And I had to eat that mushroom so I could really start to flex the accordion of my being.”“I don’t even know that there IS a past and a future. The numerous psychedelic experiences I have been gifted with by life have told me that there is NO past and there is NO future.”“Everything lives. Everything wants to live. Nothing dies, it just becomes composted and intertwined with each other.”“When I make a soup, it’s like painting. Getting all these ingredients together is so exciting, it’s so

This week's guest is the delightful and insightful Susan Molnar!http://susanmolnar.com“Everything can be broken. But also, everything can be built. And sometimes, breaking it and then rebuilding it makes it even cooler.”Tech & Maker Education for ChildrenGoogle Policy Fellow for American Association for People with DisabilitiesLeukemia SurvivorWe Laugh A Lot(Where does my body end and somebody else’s product begin?)Programming Good ProgrammersThe Problem & The Promise of Education“There’s this student who comes in who’s like, ‘I’ve never touched a computer in my life and I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ So I was like, ‘Look. Nobody was born knowing what a pixel is. A pixel was invented. This mouse? This mouse was invented. You can learn a system. Tell me about things you have learned in your life that you have been able to use to progress from. Let’s start there.’”“I am not a person of color. I have a disability, but I don’t have some of the disabilities that my friends have

This week's guest is the loquacious, thoughtful, and profound JF Martel, film-maker and author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice and the three-part essay Reality is Analog, about the philosophical themes lurking behind Netflix's series Stranger Things.http://reclaimingart.com https://www.metapsychosis.com/reality-is-analog-philosophizing-with-stranger-things-part-one/We discuss what can and cannot be captured and communicated digitally…The Primordial, Deep, Subrational Forms of Poetry, Madness, Excess…“Ultimately, art does have a function: it’s to help us better navigate the infinite chaos that is reality.”The problem of overusing or misusing Occam’s Razor“We understand the nature of reality the moment we admit that we don’t know it…the moment we admit we CAN’T know it.”“Every concept kind of contains its own opposite, or casts its own shadow.”The difference between a Sign and a SymbolFaith or Rebellion? (Patriotism or Treason?)Azazel the Peacock Angel vs. Lucifer the Rebel AngelIs there an ultimate re

This week our guest is Tibet Sprague, former solar energy system manager and scholar-practitioner in search of sustainable alternatives to our unhealthy post-industrial communities.http://tibetsprague.com for all social links, writings, and project infoWe discuss:What it was like for Tibet growing up in a healthy community.The difference between communities online and in person.The possibility of a virtual nation, a modern silk road of digital nomads moving in between communities……but the issues with that, primarily its unsustainability, and the importance of working to create local communities and tribes.The tension between freedom and fullness of living, independence and interdependence as valued differently by different societies.What does it truly mean to be free and to have a society that promotes freedom?How our individual drives are sculpted by the agencies of our environments and the people with whom we surround ourselves – so even the drive for independence is a symptom of our interrelatedness.The ch

De-Anthropomorphizing The Universe / Science & The Filter Bubblewith Cory Allen, Audio Mastering Engineer & Mindfulness Trainer, Host of The Astral Hustle Podcasthttp://cory-allen.comhttp://releaseintonow.com“It’s just all what is. And I accept every state of being as glorious.”Two dedicated truth-seekers and cosmos-abiders make a lot of dirty jokes and somehow manage to harmonize their angles on the practice of rigorous inquiry into the nature of reality and consciousness…We have a totally tangential, irreverent, penetrating conversation. (Luckily for you it’s audio only.) Somehow it all hangs together…much like Cory and I would, if they ever found out about the unrecorded parts of this chat. (Kidding!)• The paradox of having a podcast that emphasizes memory and continuity having SO. MANY. RECORDING. GLITCHES. Bizarre plumage that doesn’t fossilize and how truly precious little we know of the ancient world.• Noticing what weirds you out: your surprise reveals your expectation.• Cory Allen’s “creepy”

This week, we take an hour to explore the frontiers of the human experience with Trevor Goodman of the Body Hacking Conference in Austin, Texas.https://bodyhackingcon.com/conferenceHere’s a bit about the conference from NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/03/10/468556420/body-hacking-movement-rises-ahead-of-moral-answers • Cybernetics, prosthetics, nootropics, body modification, bionics…• The origins and history of “body hacking.”• Body modification as an answer/solution to body dysmorphia (feeling out of place “in your own skin”).“Frankly, we have no clue how things are going to be in ten or twenty years. Twenty years ago we weren’t carrying our memories around in our pockets like we are now.”• How modern transhumanism is just an extension of the ancient human project that includes clothing, fire, and other technological augmentations.• How the freedom of the body is also the freedom of the mind.• Ethical issues of body modification as personal expression and identity and interactions wit

0014 Michael Phillip (Special Episode: Westworld Problems)With special guest, host of Third Eye Drops Podcast and fellow esoteric dork extraordinaire, Michael Phillip. We go deep into the layers underneath the layers of HBO’s awesome new show Westworld – its future angst and wonder, and what it can teach us about the value and meaning of human existence.SPOILER ALERT! We get into details of the Season Finale, so don’t listen to this unless you’ve seen it.Seriously.The show is worth it, though, so watch it and then come back to this conversation – in which we totally ignore the precedent of Battlestar Galactica while discussing Westworld’s awesome treatment of “Am I actually a robot?” and its evolution from the original 1970s version – and speculate on the world OUTSIDE of Westworld, the missing context for this robot violence playland that to us makes very little economic sense.https://youtu.be/K9AwvWGjJeQhttps://twitter.com/hashtag/westworldproblemshttp://www.mememaker.net/meme/convinced-i-have-free-will-may

This week’s episode features Dr. Rupert Till, aka Dr. Chill, who does actually hold the world’s first PhD in Electronic Music. Dr. Chill also has a habit of reconstructing ancient acoustic spaces from caves and temples, then writing electronic chill out music with 3D printed replicas of the world’s oldest instruments. In other words, he’s a badass at the intersection of academic archeology and international dance festival culture. A pretty great place to be.Dr. Chill’s Blog:https://rupertchill.wordpress.com/Dr. Chill’s set from Boom Festival 2016: https://soundcloud.com/rupert-chill/sets/boom-chillout-gardens-live-setDr. Chill on Boom Festival and living on the line between academia and festival culture: “I keep saying to people, this is work. I’m not here on holiday…I’m here disseminating the results from a 3.5 Million Pound European research project.” * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *We discuss the intersection of minimal electronica and the music and instruments of