Morag Gamble talks to Jim about the history & definition of permaculture, the different places & styles in which it can be implemented, the best ways of introducing it to others, seeing permaculture as a mycelial network, emersion over theory, Morag's experience with refugee communities embracing permaculture, redefining human value, Damanhur, connected education, working with trauma, regenerative farming, supplying regenerative food to cities, gardening at all scales, the burden of debt...
Dec 10, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 98
Emery Brown joins Jim as the first in a series of guests exploring the science of consciousness. They cover anesthesiology as a probe on consciousness, types of brain observation (EEG & fMRI), propofol's impact on brain networks, brain waves in various frequency ranges, phase and frequency, breakdown of long-range networks under anesthesia, coming out of anesthesia, brain networks function & redundancy, non-linear effect of anesthesia dose impacts, EEG's use for anesthesia dose calibrati...
Dec 08, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 97
Forrest Landry talks to Jim about the value of metaphysics, how his immanent metaphysics compare to past metaphysical theories, his unique definition of self & its relationship with choice, quantum foundations, the nature of choice, interaction & time, observer as an epiphenomenon, limits of perception, soundness vs validity, reifying power & metaphor, mind vs matter, mind from brain, consciousness & time, process, and much more.
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 96
Alexander Bard talks to Jim about Syntheism's new take on theology, the purpose of & roles in religion, post-contemporary God, the role of science in religious history, Zoroastrian history & its western influence, the digital exodus, the early internet, the failure of Facebook, #metoo, virtue ethics & game theory, damaging wokeness impacts & its philosophical history, Bard's digital future, the priest & the king, the boy king, managing membranes & scales, and much more.
Nov 23, 2020•1 hr 39 min•Season 1Ep. 95
Shahin Farshchi talks to Jim about self-driving technology. They cover Waymo's driverless taxi launch, the 5 levels of automation, teleoperation, redundant safeguards, self-driving deployment approaches & challenges, planning for corner cases, consumer market speculations, operating costs, Tesla's aspirations & shadow testing advantage, the simulator in the loop business model, sensors, policy & liability, ride-sharing companies advantage, and more.
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 94
In this Currents episode, Jim and Alexander Beiner have a wide-ranging chat about his recent article on Indigenous Narcissism. They cover western cultural norms, tribalism & belonging, social media as a tribal battlefield, addiction dynamics of social media, voluntary organization decline, the erosion of trust in institutions, ethics, postmodern cultural influence & dynamics, indigenous perspectives, cultures as operating systems, integral theory & the messiness of progress, fixing v...
Nov 17, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Brent Cooper talks to Jim about his academic & intellectual background, the under-appreciation of sociology, the meta-crisis, useful critique, time-scales & approaches to solving the meta-crisis, Jim & Brent's political perspectives, GameB values, monetary theory, smuggling bad ideas, the cost of war, climate change & the Green New Deal, mapping & utilizing metamodernism, the diversity of postmodernism, the danger of cherry-picking from systems, the value in disagreement, and...
Nov 16, 2020•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 93
Alexa Clay talks to Jim about similar characteristics of intentional communities & startups, common personalities & intentions in intentional community, meeting their need for diverse skillsets & demographics, governance approaches, avoiding cult dynamics, planning for generational transition, community scales & boundaries, monetary systems, opportunity in crisis, norms & values, harnessing ritual, what we can learn from Amish traditions, and much more.
Nov 14, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 92
Joe Brewer talks to Jim about the power & elements of applied cultural evolution, carrying capacity & human impacts on the planet, industrial vs regenerative agriculture, the likelihood of large-scale collapse & mass extinction events, the transition to regenerative living, human potential & responsibility, cultural evolution ethics, disastrous neoliberal & economic incentives & impacts, nested & bioregional resilience & trade, dynamics of the erosion of social ca...
Nov 09, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 91
Joshua Epstein talks to Jim about Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as a powerful tool in the social sciences. They start with the history of Sugarscape, an early ABM framework, the dynamics of ABM systems, types of agents, ABM vs models based on systems of differential equations, predicting vs explaining systems, Axelrod's demonstration of emergent racial segregation, computational archeology, the role of parameters in ABM, inverse evolutionary techniques, Josh's agent zero dynamics, the role of emoti...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 90
Lene Rachel Andersen talks to Jim about the growing number of complex challenges we face today, the need for cultures to evolve, our cultural history & the need to integrate pre-modern norms back into culture, the value & danger of postmodernism, metamodernism vs metamodernity, the aesthetic & academic history of metamodernism, wokism, fascism vs maoism, appropriate meaning-making, education & the urgent need for historical perspectives, human development, better goals & metr...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 89
Nancy Hillis & Bruce Sawhill talk to Jim about the commonalities & dynamics of complexity science & art: innovation & imitation, breaking rules, inseparability, phase transitions, combinatorics & restraints, aesthetics, process vs result orientation, simplicity, paradox, uncertainty, emergence, navigating the edge of order & chaos, known unknowns & unknown unknowns, making space for luck, and much more.
Oct 30, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 88
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Future Thinkers co-founders Euvie Ivanova & Mike Gilliland about their new Smart Village. They cover details about their selected bioregion, their short & long-term building & scaling plans, governance approaches, the economic models for residents & emphasis on remote working, regenerative agriculture goals & ideas, the ownership model for the village, their current fundraising strategy & investment priorities, open philosophy on typ...
Oct 29, 2020•1 hr 1 min
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Bret Weinstein about the possible explanations for his banning from Facebook, social media & ideological bubbles, the history & goals for Bret's Unity 2020 movement & its ballot access strategy, the tyranny of "the lesser of two evils", election game theory, what he's learned from Unity 2020 supporters, types of non-voters, 2020 voters & candidates, post-election strategies to break our political duopoly, a non-ideological groundswell & ...
Oct 27, 2020•1 hr 27 min
Joscha Bach and Jim start by talking about the difference between mind & brain, and the body & environment's connection to mind & emotions. Joscha then offers his views on some popular consciousness theories & thinkers: consciousness as frequency, Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Functionalism, Daniel Dennet, and Roger Penrose. While covering these theories & thinkers they talk about GPT-3, learning & memory, what it means to understand, intuitive v...
Oct 26, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 87
Nadav Zeimer talks to Jim about his background & how it informs his work as a high school principal, the educational system's failure to build the right skills, consumption vs information literacy, COVID-19 impacts on education, what digital nativism & media creation means to Nadav, hands-on non-digital learning, out-dated education incentives, Nadav's academic platform & crediting system dynamics & incentives, centralized vs decentralized accreditation, learning vs memorizing, c...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 86
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Robin Hanson about whether we live in a simulation or not, why it would matter if we do, his view of Nick Bostrom's simulation logic, Boltzmann brains & other possible simulation types, the appeal of simulating magic, the quantum Hilbert space, simulation accuracy, cost, & sizes, simulation theory induced paranoia, the value of & justifications for simulations, evolutionary universes, the Drake equation & Fermi paradox, impacts of increased ...
Oct 21, 2020•50 min
Gar Alperovitz talks to Jim about what his definition of systems & their relationship to ownership & control, economic & political components in systems, GameB, the legitimacy crisis & systems collapse, the failure mode of the political process, pervasive corporate influences, theory & experimentation, the past dynamics & current decline of US unions, finding appropriate levels of governance, complexities of worker ownership, race-to-the-bottom dynamics, materialism, muni...
Oct 19, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 85
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell & Jessica Flack about their recent Aeon article, Uncertain times. Why R(0) is not a good measure for COVID contagion, network contagion & super spreaders, global non-linear causes & effects, feedback dynamics in complex systems, some hopeful views on COVID-19 impact, the importance of noise & randomness in complex systems, understanding & planning for fat-tailed distributions, designing for robustness, emergent engineeri...
Oct 18, 2020•53 min
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Steve LeVine about his article, Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy, cultural hysteresis & homeostasis, the challenge of predicting post-pandemic changes & looking to history, the emerging remote business fluency, designing for virtual serendipity, the big city COVID-19 exodus, GameB, the Civium Project, the plausibility of cities dying, dangers of the US culture war, vaccines, and more.
Oct 15, 2020•47 min
Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry & Tom Z. Collina of the Ploughshares Fund talk to Jim about their book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. They cover today's nuclear weapons amnesia, the current nuclear situation, the growing number of nuclear-armed countries, US presidential nuclear powers, first-use policies, the danger of 'launch on warning', three ways of blundering into nuclear war, nuclear game theory, the New START Treaty, W...
Oct 12, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 84
Michel Bauwens talks to Jim about the forms of P2P (peer to peer) implementations & core elements, cosmo-local production, P2P in agriculture & regenerative processes, artificial rivalrous dynamics, capitalist impacts on social media & sensemaking, political polarization, creating better social media habits, centralized vs distributed & for-profit vs for-benefit business ops, blockchain design ethos', P2P from a historical perspective, de-growth misunderstandings, dangerous impac...
Oct 08, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 83
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) about the history & creation of Slashdot, its opensource tech, rapid growth & eventual decline, unique moderation system & community involvement, utilization of scarcity, the down-side of open rating systems, the game theory of social media & the evolution of manipulation tactics, moderation trade-offs, the advantages of having a niche audience, implementing innovations inspired by Word of Warcraft, the sheer comple...
Oct 08, 2020•45 min
In a wide-ranging all-new episode, Hanzi Freinacht talks to Jim about the dynamics of political metamodernism & commonalities with Gameb, our meta-crisis & diminished sensemaking capabilities, our culture of alienation, conspiracy theories, collective sensemaking, negative impacts of market economies, top-down vs bottom-up interventions, liquid democracy & other governance innovations, optimizing for emergence, coherent pluralism, the value of ritual & social norms, localism, bui...
Oct 05, 2020•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 82
Renée DiResta talks to Jim about her work at the Standford Internet Observatory, identifying foreign social media influence, the challenge of defining state media, her work on the Election Integrity Project, sourcing social media data, foreign vs domestic disinformation & misinformation, the value & danger of political advertising, targeting & virality strategies, foreign influencer strategies that include hiring domestic journalists, election interference tactics & the 2016 US e...
Oct 01, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 81
Daniel Schmachtenberger talks to Jim about the increasing importance of sensemaking in our globalized culture, internet algorithm impacts on narrative warfare, digital dopamine hijacking & addiction dynamics, dangerous contemporary authority dynamics, global government vs governance & other coordinating processes, the history of democracy, the essential role of education, sensemaking with hyperobjects in global complexity, the danger of certainty & challenge of acting in uncertainty,...
Sep 28, 2020•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Seth Lloyd starts this episode by talking to Jim about the fundamentals of quantum physics: the quantum vs classical world, quantum interpretations, causality & randomness, the many-worlds theory, entanglement, and coherence. They then go on to talk about the emerging field of quantum computing: its incredible power & potential impacts on encryption, simulation vs other computation types, impacts on linear algebraic problems & machine learning, computational substrates, superconducti...
Sep 24, 2020•1 hr 49 min•Season 1Ep. 79
In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Andrew Taggart about what philosophy is & once was, the impacts of our psychotherapeutic culture, the good life & virtue, narcissism, friends of utility, changing family dynamics, GameB, close community living, what polling tells us about meaning & happiness, promoting & scaling the good life at the right times in the right ways, possible COVID-19 impacts, what it means to die well, and much more.
Sep 23, 2020•59 min
Ran Abramitzky talks to Jim about his book, The Mystery of the Kibbutz: history of the kibbutz movement, social and economic impact in Israel, group governance, family life, the role of coherence & homogeneity, economic forces vs egalitarianism, kibbutz life as social insurance, educational dynamics, changing governmental relationships after 1977, and the wider variety of contemporary kibbutzim. They finish the conversation by exploring other egalitarian living projects and what can be learn...
Sep 21, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 78
Kamal Sinclair talks with Jim about being an art doula, the role of fiction in science, the power of storytelling, impacts of new media & technology, mind & perception, the Question Bridge project's view into the lives of black men, storytelling in VR, the challenges of creating & funding VR content, the promise of augmented & mixed reality, artistic impacts of postmodernism, archetypes vs stereotypes, the Guild of Future Architects, the upcoming Collective Wisdom Platform, and m...
Sep 14, 2020•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 77
