Playing for Team Human today: New York State Assemblyman and candidate for New York City Public Advocate, Ron Kim . Ron will be helping us understand the power of local, grassroots activism and how to make government a thing of the people. With the election just around the corner, February 26th, Kim is spreading a message about putting community over corporations. “This is about people investing in people,” Kim explains. Hear Ron Kim’s vision for change that moves beyond “race to the bottom...
Feb 20, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 121
Playing for Team Human today: immigrant rights activists Jacinta Gonzalez and Amy Herzog. Jacinta and Amy will be showing us why the people living in Queens, New York may not want to welcome Amazon’s HQ2 with open arms. With Amazon poised to deliver on lucrative government contracts for surveillance and immigration enforcement technologies, Jacinta and Amy make it clear that the stakes are higher than just rising rents and gentrification. On today’s episode we’ll take a hard look at Amazon...
Feb 13, 2019•58 min•Ep. 120
In this special episode of Team Human, Douglas is joined by Siobhan O’Connor , vice president of editorial at Medium . Siobhan and Douglas reverse roles as she hosts the official Team Human book launch. This event was recorded live at Civic Hall on January 23, just one day after the Team Human manifesto hit the shelves. Whether you’ve been a Team Human listener from the very beginning or just started reading the book, this conversation exemplifies Rushkoff at his most open and candid. Doug...
Feb 06, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 119
Playing for Team Human today: journalist and Nation columnist Aaron Maté. Aaron is gong to break down “Russiagate,” taking a sober look at the media frenzy of “bombshell” stories asserting a Russian conspiracy behind the 2016 election. Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. He calls it a “privilege protection racket” that thrives on distraction and misdirection, turning the public away from a real critique of...
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 118
Today’s episode is a special live celebration of the release of Team Human the book and manifesto, which is now available everywhere! On January 8th, Douglas was joined by acclaimed author Seth Godin for a pre-release book party at Betaworks Studios in NYC. Douglas reverses roles for the show, with Seth hosting the conversation. Not the typical book reading, Douglas and Seth use this live event as an opportunity to engage with each other and audience in a spontaneous, free-form Team Human conver...
Jan 23, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 117
Playing for Team Human today; technologist, futurist, inventor and mage Mark Pesce . In this conversation with Douglas, part two of a live Team Human show at Civic Hall , Pesce offers a thought-provoking frame through which we might better understand our relationship to algorithms and artificial intelligence: What might you call a creature that feeds on your energy, knows your weaknesses, and can tamper with your emotional state in ways that compel you to act beyond your best interest? Centuries...
Jan 16, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 116
Playing for Team Human today: Penny Abeywardena . In part one of a two-part live Team Human show, Douglas is joined by New York City’s Commissioner for International Affairs, Penny Abeywardena. Penny’s work looks at the synergies between local and global issues. Guided by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Penny is helping make New York City a significant player in global efforts to solve humanity’s most pressing issues of immigration, poverty, climate change, injustice, and inequality.&nbs...
Jan 09, 2019•47 min•Ep. 115
Playing for Team Human today: media activist and scholar Geert Lovink. Geert will be helping us see how an understanding of the political economy is not enough. We have to reacquaint ourselves with the experiential layer of our humanity and even reclaim our sadness to counter the stultifying effects of platform capitalism. Today, when our sources of information are intimately intertwined with our social lives, it’s not as simple as just “going offline.” How can we overcome the anti-human agendas...
Dec 12, 2018•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 114
Playing for Team Human today: media and technology scholar Jamie Cohen. Jamie will be helping us understand the commodity of authenticity. His work looks at the ways authenticity is quantized and codified on media platforms such as YouTube. It’s a process through which trust and connection become instrumentalized as tools for the monetization and manipulation of audience attention. Jamie warns how, coupled with powerful algorithms, the gaming of authenticity threatens serious social consequences...
Dec 05, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 113
Playing for Team Human today: business reformer and the author of Reboot : A Blueprint for Happy Human Business in the Digital Age , Jason Stockwood. Jason will be showing us how to minimize the negative externalities of big business. It all comes down to the bizarre idea of providing goods and services that people actually need. Could such a radical business concept catch on today? Jason is striving to use business and technology to be part of the solution, rather than an extractive, negative f...
Nov 28, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 112
Playing for Team Human today: activist, professor, podcast producer, journalist, and musician Chenjerai Kumanyika. Chenjerai joins Douglas in the basement Media Squat at CUNY Queens College for a conversation about why studying history matters more than ever as we fight for a just future. Chenjerai also shares a bit of his own unique personal history; how he went from working in an emergency room to a touring as an international hip hop artist, to his most recent work as an activist/journa...
Nov 14, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 111
Playing for Team Human today: Susan Basterfield and Anthony Cabraal. Susan and Anthony share the open secrets of bottom-up collaboration as we celebrate the publication of Enspiral’s book, Better Work Together . It's a conversation about the power of working together, building on ideas “good enough to try,” and creating a space where it’s “safe to fail.” Looking for collaborative and participatory ways to create social change? Enspiral has collected and opened up its learnings for all to replica...
Nov 07, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 110
Playing for Team Human today: Jason Schmitt. Jason looks at the big business of for-profit academic publishing in his new documentary Paywall:The Business of Scholarship . Should the the world's research be locked behind closed doors? Jason makes the case for open access on today's Team Human. Opening the show, Rushkoff offers a monologue on the state of democracy. While our politicians and their propagandists have lost faith in our ability to vote purposefully, Team Human knows better. There ha...
Oct 31, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 109
Playing for Team Human today is playwright, actor, director, writer and teacher Jessica Blank . Jessica shares her insights into the process of building empathy through story. Through works such as her documentary plays the Exonerated and Aftermath , Jessica’s characters stare their audience directly in the eye, reach out to their heart, and open a pathway for transformation. This, Jessica explains, is the magic of being in shared space with people embodying real, human stories. Learn about her ...
Oct 24, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 108
Playing for Team Human today is Fred Turner , professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Stanford University. Fred will be helping us recover the countercultural roots of digital media, while also imploring us to look toward the mundane, existing ways of staking our claim to authority over the world in which we live. Turner has done extensive research into the countercultural and even psychedelic roots of cyberculture, culminating in his extended biography of Stewart Brand titled&...
Oct 17, 2018•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 107
Playing for Team Human today is systems thinker, writer, and filmmaker Nora Bateson . Nora will be telling us how to stop looking at things as objects and begin seeing the spaces and connections between them. It’s not too late to bring our species back from the brink! This conversation was recorded backstage in Palo Alto at the Institute For the Future's (IFTF) 50th Anniversary Gala. I first met at Nora Bateson at a general semantics conference where she was screening her then brand ne...
Oct 10, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 106
Playing for Team Human today a double header of people trying to effect real cultural change in very different ways. Up first is cultural anthropologist, host of the 2 Dope Boys podcast, and consultant Philip McKenzie. Philip makes the case for injecting corporate america with the values of social justice by subverting the machine from within. Following Philip is founder of Front Porch Forum, Michael Wood Lewis. Michael shows us how the net can be used to turn residents back into neighbors. It’s...
Oct 03, 2018•2 hr 44 min•Ep. 105
Playing for Team Human today is platform cooperative activist, journalist, and author of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy , Nathan Schneider. With contemporary examples and historical context, Nathan makes the case that the co-op movement is not mere utopian idealism, but a very real and vital economic shift that is being harnessed for social good. It’s a conversation that embraces the co-op transformation as a path to a more just and equitable soci...
Sep 26, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 104
What happens when our past becomes indelibly fixed in the online databases that shape our digital identities? Is there ever escape from the internet’s permanent memory for our blemishes and increasingly public misfortunes? Sarah Lageson studies the serious social ramifications and new forms of “digital punishment” meted out by the growth of online crime data. On today’s episode she discusses this topic, the focus of her forthcoming book, Digital Punishment - Uses and Abuses of Criminal Records i...
Sep 19, 2018•59 min•Ep. 103
Playing for Team Human today, technology and social media scholar, founder of Data & Society Research Institute, and author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, danah boyd . On today's episode, Douglas and danah talk about stepping outside of our narrow worldviews. How does technology amplify our biases? Where does human agency lie in complex, networked systems? What is the distinction between a "network" versus a "community?" These and many more questions explored in...
Sep 12, 2018•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 102
One of the lies many of us have bought over the years is the American Dream. It seemed to work - at least back in the day of the GI bill and guaranteed mortgages. You work hard, go to college, and things will work out. You’ll be okay. And now, a lot of us who were privileged enough to be able to follow that path, are finding ourselves unable to reach that place of security anymore. It’s a new precarity - shared by almost everyone in America today - and what our guest Alissa Quart has beaut...
Sep 05, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 101
Team Human celebrates its 100th episode with this special “double feature,” recorded live before an audience at Civic Hall in Manhattan. Joining Douglas on the stage is writer, artist, and journalist Molly Crabapple . With just “compressed ash and wood pulp,” Molly brings to life images of injustice and makes visible that which is too often rendered invisible. Her paintings from Guantanamo, Istanbul, Syria, Puerto Rico, and recently immigration detention centers in Texas bear witness to th...
Aug 29, 2018•2 hr 52 min•Ep. 100
How might altered states of consciousness deepen our empathy, imagination, and lead us find the other others? Writer, thinker, and explorer of consciousness, Eliott Edge looks at the ways in which virtual reality and psychedelics can create new frames of reference and enhance our connection to each other and the planet. In his latest book, 3 Essays on Virtual Reality: Overlords, Civilization, and Escape , Eliott engages with the ethical and existential questions of reality as a simulation. "If r...
Aug 22, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 99
Playing for Team Human today, “The Most Connected Man on Earth," author of Don’t Unplug: How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours , Chris Dancy . Dancy has “pushed through” personal surveillance technology and has come back to teach us the lessons he has learned from years of intense firsthand engagement as a “ mindful cyborg .” In this episode, perhaps the most candid and open conversation on Team Human to date, Dancy shares his personal story. He explains how technology saved his life, ...
Aug 15, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 98
Special Announcement and Invitation! Free Show. Limited Tickets Remain. Details and Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jace-clayton-and-molly-crabapple-with-douglas-rushkoff-team-human-live-tickets-48339958116?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_event_email&utm_term=viewmyevent_button Next Thursday, August 16th, Douglas will be joined live on stage at Civic hall in New York City by two incredibly talented, powerful, and thoughtful human beings; artist, journalist, and author...
Aug 09, 2018•2 min
Playing for Team Human today, actress, movie star, visionary of the human-centered future, and — perhaps most importantly - Gracie the Wonderdog’s human partner, Parker Posey. Parker will be sharing what it’s like to play a supposedly evil character like Doctor Smith on the Netflix series Lost in Space , as well as some of the experiences, insight, and love of life that went into her definitively fabulous new book - You’re On An Airplane . Today’s show comes to you, ALIVE, from the headquarters ...
Aug 08, 2018•58 min•Ep. 97
Playing for Team Human today is YouTube phenomenon, Netflix comedian, and writer and director of the movie Eighth Grade , Bo Burnham. Bo and Douglas consider the other, positive side of social media — how it still gives young people a way to test and share social strategies and express themselves. A conversation with many inspired tangents, Douglas and Bo also look at the ways social media pressures us to live our lives like a performance in a movie, the tragedy of becoming trapped in meta...
Aug 01, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 96
In July 2018, Team Human partnered with Virtual Futures for an evening of connection and conversation at JuJu’s Bar and Stage in London. Joining Douglas on stage, science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer Pat Cadigan followed by biologist, author, and TED outlaw Rupert Sheldrake . Presented here in Episode 95 is Part Two of this live event featuring Douglas in conversation with Rupert Sheldrake, followed by a group conversation and audience question and answer session. If you misse...
Jul 25, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 95
On July 9th 2018 Team Human partnered with Virtual Futures for an evening of connection and conversation at JuJu's Bar and Stage in London. Joining Douglas on stage, science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer Pat Cadigan followed by biologist, author, and TED outlaw Rupert Sheldrake. Presented here is Part One of the program, featuring Douglas in conversation with Pat Cadigan. Pat and Douglas take a winding path through topics including virtual reality, identity, and telling the future. I...
Jul 18, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 94
Playing for Team Human today is Palak Shah, Social Innovations Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) . Palak will be enlightening us about America’s hidden labor force, the value they create, and how we can support her efforts to give them the voice and dignity they deserve. While domestic work has long been viewed as something less than “real work,” Palak explains how this invisible labor is actually the backbone of both our society and the economy. Together, Palak and...
Jul 11, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 93
