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 th...
Apr 05, 2017•50 min
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 perspec...
Mar 29, 2017•50 min
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 wo...
Mar 22, 2017•49 min
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-mo...
Mar 15, 2017•41 min
Playing for Team Human today is activist trainer and executive director of theRules.org , Alnoor Ladha. Ladha will help us understand the interplay between political organization, system thinking, storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power. In a conversation spanning a wide range of topics including anarchism, collective organizing, local economies, psychedelics, and even spirituality, Ladha and Rushkoff underscore the multifaceted and necessary work of building ...
Mar 08, 2017•47 min
Playing for Team Human today is Jason Van Anden. Jason is an artist, inventor, and software developer who builds apps to promote social justice. In 2011, Van Anden invented I’m Getting Arrested , software that enabled Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to alert friends and family in the event they were arrested. In 2012 Van Anden developed Stop and Frisk Watch , a tool used to monitor the New York City Police Department’s controversial practice. Van Anden has since has gone on to head Quadrant 2 ,...
Mar 01, 2017•47 min
Playing for Team Human today is data-visualization humanist Danne Woo. Woo is going to share with us how he uses data to provoke critical thinking, humor, and even human connection with his creative design. Woo is the creator of Data Visual a user-friendly web-based design interface that empowers individuals to create their own shareable data-driven graphics. We'll learn why the Trump presidency has inspired Woo to design "a chart a day" and to "make tweets trump again".&n...
Feb 22, 2017•26 min
Playing for Team Human today is Brian Fitzgerald, co-founder of Tinkergarten . Tinkergarten began as the passion project of Brian and his wife, Meghan, a long-time educator. As new parents, Brian and Meghan were looking for hands-on, outdoor learning experiences for their daughter. Unable to find any, they started Tinkergarten. Today, Tinkergarten is a growing community focused on bringing memorable, tactile, and outdoor educational play opportunities to children and parents. Brian shares how hi...
Feb 15, 2017•52 min
Playing for Team Human today is Silvia Zuur. In 2012, Zuur founded Chalkle to reignite adult education in New Zealand. Today, Zuur serves as a director at Enspiral , a social impact network that builds community driven solutions for a diverse set of issues including education, funding, and cooperative organizing. Enspiral is famously home to Loomio , a cooperative founded 2012 to create more effective tools for collaborative decision-making. Zuur joins Douglas Rushkoff to talk about the value of...
Feb 07, 2017•50 min
This week’s Team Human is part 2 of a fascinating conversation between longtime friends Zach Leary and Douglas Rushkoff. Check out part 1 over on Zach’s show, It’s All Happening . Rushkoff and Zach take a winding path through the “psychedelic substrate” of digital technology, looking back at the strange trips that birthed the modern web and virtual space of the internet. Most importantly, Leary and Rushkoff retrieve those human connections; the compassion, vision, a...
Feb 01, 2017•50 min
Playing for Team Human today is L.A. Kauffman. Douglas met with Kauffman on the eve of the release of her new book, Direct Action, Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism , published by Verso press. Direct Action charts a history of renewal and reinvention in activist movements since the 1960s with a focus on how we might learn from both the successes and failures of our radical past. In today’s episode, L.A. offers an invigorating commitment to protest, grassroots organizing, and the...
Jan 24, 2017•39 min
Playing for Team Human is Jonathan Larsen. Larsen is a journalist, comedy writer, and TV producer who has worked on the Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart, Up w/ Chris Hayes, and Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. Larsen recently launched TheFingNews.com , a news digest that brings context, analysis, and humor to the daily news. Jonathan joins Douglas Rushkoff to talk about the Fucking News and the new Indivertible Guide . In a wide-ranging conversation, Larsen and Rushkoff look behind the scenes of reporting...
Jan 17, 2017•52 min
Playing for Team Human is Brian Hughes. Brian is a recent graduate of the Media Studies Graduate Program at CUNY Queens College, home to Team Human and the Laboratory for Digital Humanism. Hughes’s work explores media origins and portrayals of extremism. On today’s episode, Hughes begins by sharing his research on Arab Nationalism as related to media technologies from global broadcast to networked communications. Using his recent MA thesis as the springboard, Hughes and Rushkoff take...
Jan 10, 2017•47 min
Playing for Team Human Today is Ari Wallach. In a conversation that spans politics, technology, history, and even biology, Wallach and Rushkoff look at the threat of short-term thinking in times of crisis. This freewheeling discussion tackles deep assumptions of both the Left and the Right, while striving toward a long-term strategy for rebuilding solidarity and progress in society. Visit Ari’s website AriWallach.com to learn more about his work. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted ...
Dec 21, 2016•47 min
Playing for Team Human today, all the way from Sweden, is local food facilitator Viktor Zaunders. Zaunders is working to organize sustainable, regenerative, and collaborative local food systems. In this episode, Zaunders and Douglas talk about permaculture and the lessons that can be applied to social systems at large. Visit Viktor’s website zaunders.net to learn more about the variety of projects he is working on. In this interview, Zaunders mentions Open Source Ecology . They provide a w...
Dec 13, 2016•39 min
Playing for Team Human today is Natalie Foster. Foster brings a unique determination and optimism to questions surrounding the future of work. Her research as a fellow of the Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative and as an affiliate at the Institute for the Future focuses on rebuilding the social contract for the changing landscape of labor in the 21st century. On today’s episode, Foster and Rushkoff discuss worker protections, cooperative ownership, precarious labor, and the future of...
Nov 29, 2016•48 min
Playing for Team Human today is psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, and psychedelics researcher Dr. Julie Holland. Dr. Holland explains the role of psychedelics in helping people gain the new forms of information and awareness they need to become more fully human. Is there the potential for greater understanding and human connection through the psychedelic experience? Together Holland and Rushkoff explore this question, charting out a path toward greater empathy and solidarity. Today’s mon...
Nov 22, 2016•31 min
Rushkoff visits greatagain.gov and conducts a thought experiment: what if we all apply to work in Trump’s administration? A post-election special episode. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 15, 2016•17 min
Playing for Team Human is author, activist, ethnomusicologist and singer Kyra Gaunt Ph.D. Kyra’s research on the harassment of young women and people of color has recently focused on the YouTube phenomenon of twerking videos and trolling. In today’s episode Kyra and Douglas talk about invisible audiences and their effect on social media interaction. Kyra warns how persistent media disproportionately stigmatizes marginalized communities. She offers strategies to reclaim “full sp...
Nov 08, 2016•35 min
Playing for Team Human is Mushon Zer-Aviv. Mushon shares his creative strategies for resistance against assimilation into the big data mindset. His playful, interactive designs turn the cult of data collection on its head, re-ambiguating humans and embracing the most quirky, inspired, and anomalous aspects of our lives. Mushon’s recent project, AdNauseam.io challenges surveillance advertising by feeding it back into itself. Check out this and his many projects linked below. You can also le...
Nov 01, 2016•35 min
Playing for Team Human is art activist Steve Lambert . Steve reclaims public spaces with his work, igniting the radical imagination and critical thinking of his audience collaborators. With his recent piece, “Capitalism Works For Me!(True/False),” Lambert brought an interactive scoreboard out to the public, and in doing so, sparked an honest, candid, and personal discussion about how the economy is working for people. Lambert is a founder and director of the Center for Artistic Activ...
Oct 25, 2016•31 min
Playing for Team Human is Aaron Dignan. Aaron is a strategist, author, and founder of the Ready , where he works on updating the “organizational operating systems” of business. Dignan has advised top executives at global brands including GE, Ford, and American Express. In today’s episode, Aaron and Douglas speak candidly about what goes on behind the scenes in the halls of corporate power. Can businesses be redesigned into more meaningful and cooperative work structures in the ...
Oct 18, 2016•34 min
Playing for Team Human today is D.C. Vito, Executive Director of The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project). The LAMP brings hands-on media education into underserved communities, empowering students and teachers with the skills needed to comprehend, create, and critique media. In today’s episode, D.C. and Douglas make the concept of “media literacy” tangible for an interactive media era, while unmasking the social programming lurking just behind the screen. Learn more at the...
Oct 11, 2016•34 min
Playing For Team Human today, the brilliant and terrifying artist and bio-hacker Heather Dewey- Hagborg . As a transdisciplinary artist, Heather explores the intersection of science, art and biopolitics. Heather recently made the headlines with a project called Stranger Visions , in which she collected random human genetic material left behind in the detritus of public spaces to generate portrait masks of strangers using a process called forensic DNA phenotyping . In another recent project, Radi...
Oct 04, 2016•26 min
Today’s Team Human was recorded live on the floor of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum , where we caught up with Marina Gorbis , executive director to the Institute for the Future ( IFTF ). Marina joins Team Human to help us see how a utilitarian value set has been embedded into our society and its technologies. Together Marina and Douglas discuss those ambiguous and even anomalous qualities of being human, while looking to a future that embraces humanity as something greater than mere dat...
Sep 27, 2016•30 min
Playing for Team Human today is Kio Stark . Kio’s new book When Strangers Meet explores the transformative power to be found in person-to-person interactions with strangers. Kio describes how even a brief interaction can foster empathy and open up the possibility for meaningful human connection. Kio and Douglas challenge the unwritten rules of social interaction and talk about how basic human connection can spark positive social change. Links: Kio’s recent New York Times travel featu...
Sep 20, 2016•35 min
Playing for Team Human today: Andy Bichlbaum of the infamous Yes Men, the world’s most accomplished working culture hackers, responsible for devastating satirical attacks on Dow Chemical, Halliburton, Exxon, the US Chamber of Commerce, Dupont, and others. Bichlbaum is going to share with us the secret to fighting against even violent oppression with playful resistance. After listening to the show, check out the Yes Lab, a resource for playful resisters everywhere. http://yeslab.org/ And ch...
Sep 13, 2016•39 min
Today on Team Human we’re looking at protest. While we may be willing to raise our voices, sign petitions, and even get arrested, are we willing and ready to take hold of power? Author, activist, and Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White gives a passionate assessment of the state of protest today while putting forth his own vision for revolutionary social change or what he calls, The End of Protest . Micah is also currently running for Mayor of Nehalem, Oregon. View his campaign here ....
Sep 06, 2016•46 min
Playing for Team Human is Esteban Kelly . Kelly is an exemplary leader in the movement for promoting solidarity and workplace democracy. While working with the Mariposa Food Co-op , Kelly founded the Food Justice and Anti Racism working group . He was also appointed by the Mayor of Philadelphia to the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council . Currently, Esteban Kelly serves as Co-Executive director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives as well as a director of AORTA , the Anti- Oppressio...
Aug 30, 2016•48 min
Special Pre-Launch Episode: Recorded January 2016 Playing for Team Human today is Professor Richard Maxwell. Richard Maxwell is a political economist of media. His research begins at the intersection of politics and economics to analyze the global media, their social and cultural impact, and the policies that regulate their reach and operations. Richard has published on a wide array of media topics. Recent work includes The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media (Editor) Media and the Ecological...
Aug 01, 2016•31 min
