This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com Before we begin: I’m teaching a six-week online course on science, philosophy, economics, media, and dinosaurs! Join me at NuraLearning.com for Jurassic Worlding, a psychedelic deep dive into self-fulfilling techno-thrillers and the analog-digital transition, starting August 1st! Use discount code FUTUREFOSSIL for 10% off. This week on Future Fossils, I enter into a deep and delightful call-and-response ga...
Jul 12, 2023•1 hr 32 min
This week we talk with Jamie Joyce of The Society Library! ✨ SOME References: An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’ Regina Rini and the Epistemic Backstop Stephanie Lepp Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens Alison Gopnik The Hyperion Cantos The Internet Archive Ed Bernays ✨ Support Future Fossils: Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts. Subscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon . Buy my original paintings or commission new work . Buy my music on Bandcamp ! Or if you’re ...
Jun 19, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Pardon the delay, as I’ve been gathering more conversations than I’ve shared. Future Fossils is about to go into the rapids with three amazing back-to-back episodes! The next will be with Jamie Joyce of The Society Library and then it’s Greg Thomas of The Jazz Leadership Project with producer/futurist Stephanie Lepp (formerly The Center for Humane Technology and The Institute for Cultural Evolution ). BUT FIRST! Our guest for this episode is technologist, best-selling author, and WIRED founder K...
Jun 03, 2023•58 min
In this episode I welcome Caveat Magister , resident philosopher of Burning Man, to Future Fossils to discuss his latest book, Turn Your Life Into Art ! We talk about transformational cross-country and urban adventures, psychomagic, and the difference between two kinds of experience design — one of which structures something fun but easily consumable and the other which demands our personal transformation at great risk and maybe peril. Get more familiar with your daimon through this conversation...
May 03, 2023•1 hr 38 min
This week we talk about the intersections of large language models, the golden age of television and its storytelling mishaps, making one’s way through the weirding of the labor economy, and much more with two of my favorite Gen X science fiction aficionados, OG podcaster KMO and our mutual friend Kevin Arthur Wohlmut. In this episode — a standalone continuation to my recent appearance on The KMO Show, we skip like a stone across mentions of every Star Trek series, the collapse of narratives and...
Apr 13, 2023•1 hr 46 min
Welcome to episode two hundred of Future Fossils! On this episode, I'm joined by Ehren Cruz ( LinkedIn , Instagram , Website ) and Daphne Krantz ( LinkedIn , Instagram , Website ) to discuss transcendence, trauma, and transformation. We talk about the festival world, our individual journeys, the rise of psychedelics in therapeutic applications, the potential of these substances, and their cultural roots. We also discuss addiction, trauma, and the consequences of collective consciousness, freedom...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 45 min
This week I have one of the most vulnerable, personal, and profound conversations ever shared on the show — and it’s one that speaks directly to the deepest and most persistent themes addressed on Future Fossils. Android Jones is one of the world’s pre-eminent digital painters and an utterly singular and inimitable visionary artist. He’s also a loving husband and father of three, an old friend (even if we don’t talk as often as I’d like, or as perhaps we should), and someone I regard as a torch-...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 35 min
“We want to be careful when we’re in conflict on the internet.” – Tadaaki Hozumi Tadaaki Hozumi, member of Japan’s oldest surviving lineage of royal Shinto priests, is back for the second part of our three-hour conversation on animism in the ancient-future technological construct-wilderness of the 21st Century! In this episode we discuss the ongoing battle between the spirits of the analog “realm of circles” and the digital “realm of squares,” the blurry boundary between humans and artificial in...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 25 min
This week and next, we talk to returning guest Tadaaki Hozumi about the crossroads between the esoteric history of Japan and its Indigenous peoples and royal family; the mysterious convergence of ancient records from around the world on stories of lost civilizations and extraterrestrial encounters; and how animism and magic seem ripe for retrieval as we barrel down the chute of the Technological Singularity. This is one of those edge-case conversations that I’ll look back on in twenty years and ...
Jan 20, 2023•1 hr 24 min
Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc. “Notice more. Let go. Use everything.” I’ve decided Future Fossils is going to double down on its commitment to helping people navigate uncharted waters by focusing explicitly on improvisation in 2023, and our first stop together on this journey is a marvelously soulful and profound discussion with my friend Robert Poynton . Robert is many things, including an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Bus...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 21 min
Complete show notes at Patreon Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc. ✨ About This Episode: This week we dig down as what W.J.T. Mitchell called “paleontologists of the present” to explore the ramifications of A.I. on the creative economy as lensed through two notorious William Gibson quotes: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed” and “The street finds its own uses for things.” Joining me on the call are arti...
Dec 12, 2022•2 hr 10 min
Complete, EXTENSIVE show notes at Patreon Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc. How much of natural history is inevitable, and how much is the result of chance? Do mass extinctions slow the evolution of the biosphere, or speed it up? These are two of the six great questions of biology explored by Simon Conway Morris, famous evolutionary theorist, in his latest book. From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution (...
Nov 20, 2022•1 hr 39 min
This week I talk with environmental philosopher and Santa Clara Clara Assistant Professor Kimberly Dill , an old friend of mine from Austin, Texas whom I met at Bouldin Creek Coffee over lemon maté sours and a deep dive into Eastern nondual traditions while she was in school studying arguments against free will under acclaimed analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. She has since grown into a formidable scholar and ethics instructor in her own right and positively exudes a studious, diligent, carin...
Oct 30, 2022•1 hr 59 min
This week I go solo and get reflective on age, noise, loss, mystery, stars and angels, dreams and seasons, modern science and the retrieval of magic... Read the ✨ EXTENSIVE ✨ show notes, and join the Future Fossils community, at Patreon. cataract (n.) early 15c., "a waterfall, floodgate, furious rush of water," from Latin cataracta "waterfall," from Greek katarhaktes "waterfall, broken water; a kind of portcullis," noun use of an adjective compound meaning "swooping, down-rushing," from kata "do...
Sep 26, 2022•51 min
Subscribe wherever you dig podcasts Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, NFTs, etc. Dig into the complete, extensive show notes (and join our online community) at Patreon This week on the show I chat with the storied, insightful, multidimensional Roland Harwood ( Twitter | LinkedIn | Liminal | Participatory City Foundation ) — a “compulsive connector,” generalist, “failed astronaut,” pianist, Founder, CEO, Trustee, impresario of inte...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Dig into the complete, extensive show notes at Patreon This week we’re joined by Lauren Seyler, Assistant Professor of Biology at Stockton University ( Lab Website , Twitter @darkmicrobio , Google Scholar ), who studies the microscopic living world that flourishes in dark places: the mud of coastal marshes, inside rocks, and in sediments at the bottom of the sea. She’s also co-authored a number of publications on how scientists can work ethically with I...
Aug 20, 2022•1 hr 25 min
This week on Future Fossils, we sync up with globe-trotting (Singapore-based) futurist Parag Khanna, author of several internationally best-selling books on the shifting landscape of human geography and technological evolution. My acquaintance with Parag dates back all the way to 2011 when I found his Hybrid Reality Institute, and started writing for his BigThink blog, thanks to the writing of Jason Silva — I knew this was a party I couldn’t miss, even though I was then, as now, deeply ambivalen...
Jul 28, 2022•1 hr 20 min
Complete, EXTENSIVE show notes at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield ! As guest 0xZakk says at the very end of this conversation, most of the construction projects throughout the history of civilization have been coercive. What does it look like when we actually build things in a really cooperative way? This episode was recorded in November 2021 when the cryptocurrency markets were insanely bullish and the world relatively stable…but releasing it now, in July 2022, seems more aptly-timed than I could h...
Jul 03, 2022•1 hr 22 min
Find the complete show notes for this episode on Patreon . This episode was recorded live in Austin, Texas at the West China Tea House in partnership with EFF-Austin , a non-profit committed to the establishment and protection of digital rights and defense of the wealth of digital information, innovation, and technology. Founded in 1991 as a local sub-chapter of The Electronic Frontier Foundation and run as an independent organization, EFF-Austin promotes the right of all citizens to communicate...
Jun 10, 2022•1 hr 22 min
or, “Why Isn’t There A Science of X?” or, “Alchemy is to Chemistry as Astrology is to…?” “If people don’t believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will.” “It’s time for a new era, for someone to figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture, for future study, and — if the findings are correct — what they say about our basic scientific attitude.” – Robert G. Jahn “We have been very open with our data. But how do you get peer review when you don’t ha...
May 15, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Don't waste another minute here. Go read the full show notes on Patreon! Be forewarned: This latest episode is some extremely heady stuff. But thankfully, it's also full of heart and soul... Back in February, Jonathan Rowson posted two clips ( here and here ) from his latest in-progress writing tlimito Twitter, where it succeeded in baiting a bunch of the folks with whom I regularly interact as members of the so-called " Liminal Web " into reflecting on the value of partitioning a global boil of...
Apr 29, 2022•1 hr 43 min
I don't even know where to start with this amazing episode. Henry Gee is the Senior Editor of Nature , the author of many cool science books including his latest, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth ; an accomplished musician; a riveting storyteller and humorous fellow; the Founding Editor of Nature 's Futures sci-fi series; and a total joy in conversation. We met to discuss his brilliant tour of evolutionary history past and future, and did, but also occupied a fair bit of our two hours tog...
Mar 28, 2022•2 hr 2 min
Find the complete show notes and support the show at Patreon. This week on Future Fossils, Orpheus is in the building for a soulful and visionary conversation with Grammy-winning blues singer-songwriter Mike Mattison and inveterate English professor Ernest Suarez of Catholic University, co-authors of the new book Poetic Song Verse: Blues-based Popular Music and Poetry . Their book explores the history of the complicated love affair between literature and rock, tracing the tangled roots back thro...
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr 15 min
Microbiologist, independent scholar, ritualist, equestrian therapist, and overall badass Siv Watkins joins the show this week to discuss right relationship with the world of the invisibly small: mood-altering gut flora, the COVID-19 pandemic, Lyme disease, AIDS, and other chronic ailments…as well as with the all-encompassing tapestry of microbial life from which we evolved and within which we exist from birth to death. It’s turtles all the way down! Tag an anti-natalist friend and have them give...
Feb 16, 2022•1 hr 15 min
Get the AMAZING full show notes on Patreon (free public post). Jim Rutt joins us this week to explore the pre- and post-history of “GameB”, an antidote to the social script of rampant ecocidal profit maximalization. Of course, Jim himself is an optimizer par excellence, a true Boomer if there ever were one who saw the wave of personal computing coming in and rode it like a champion surfer from one tech company to the next. What is the relationship between making it big by connecting people and f...
Feb 01, 2022•2 hr 7 min
This week I talk with four brilliant people working in and around the study of complex systems about the World Wide Web’s co-evolution with cryptocurrencies and other distributed ledger technologies: the promise AND the peril; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a hugely complicated topic and there wasn’t enough time in this panel for Complexity Weekend (recorded on 14 November 2021) for everyone to get on the same page, much less come to a final agreement about anything — but the real value o...
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 26 min
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 comm...
Dec 18, 2021•1 hr 52 min
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 p...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr 15 min
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 . H...
Nov 13, 2021•56 min
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 f...
Oct 29, 2021•1 hr 2 min
