Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff

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Artist Kenya Robinson joins Douglas Rushkoff to explore what happens when the boundary between art and everyday life disappears. From earning an MFA at Yale to working as a mail carrier and training as an auto mechanic, Robinson reflects on class, race, ambition, institutional definitions of success, and learning to see work itself as creative practice. Along the way, she connects automotive systems to tarot, ritual, energy, and “deep magic,” while considering how artists can loosen their grip on recogni...

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Douglas Rushkoff is joined by storyteller and thinker Catherine Connors to explore Pope Leo XIV’s remarkable intervention into the AI debate. Together, they unpack his critique of transhumanism, technological inevitability and Silicon Valley’s vision of human progress and his radical case for the dignity, imperfection and magnificence of being human.

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What if anarchism isn’t chaos, but a way of putting human beings back in charge of their own lives? Douglas Rushkoff is joined by former British diplomat Carne Ross, for a conversation about power, democracy, mutual aid, and what it actually takes to change the systems governing our lives.

Ross argues that the means are the ends: we don’t have to wait for a revolution, a new president, or some imagined future society to begin living differently. Instead, meet your neighbors. Share tools. Organize around the needs of your community. Create spaces where everyone affected by a...

Rushkoff breaks down why modern money acts like a forever chemical: A toxic, non-decaying asset designed to accumulate at the top of the pyramid rather than support living communities.

Rushkoff traces how central currencies replaced organic, local exchange systems to enforce debt and growth mandates. He exposes how this same extractive logic links legacy finance, crypto grifts, and the current AI token bubble, burning real-world resources to convert living human thought and energy into dead digital symbols.

Learn how we can resist the bullshit economy by shifting toward systems that favor flow, life, and human...

Rushkoff sits down with renowned chef Benjamin Castro of Benjamin's Kitchen to explore the intersection of food, community, and what it means to nourish the human spirit. 

Chef Castro shares his journey, breaking down why food is more than just fuel.

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Are we so focused on saving the world that we’re forgetting how to care for it?  

Rushkoff explores the paralyzing ambient terror of the meta-crisis, polycrisis, and impending societal collapse. Recounting a transformative personal experience sitting at the bedside of a dying relative, Rushkoff re-evaluates the urge to fix everything through abstract strategies and grand interventions.

Instead of treating the future as an engineering problem to solve, what happens if we shift from being agents of change to agents of care? What if our most radical act of resistance isn't another techno-fix or activist bypa...

Rushkoff sits down with author, podcaster, and scholar Conner Habib (Against Everyone with Conner Habib, Hawk Mountain) for a conversation about what we have to lose before anything can change.

They move from dying-before-you-die and the idea that civilization has not yet begun, into Rudolf Steiner's Ahriman -- the force of cold reduction that wants to convince us we're just biological robots.

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As President of The Atlantic and former Editor-in-Chief of Wired, Nicholas Thompson sits down with Rushkoff to discuss the precarious intersection of artificial intelligence, journalism, and American democracy.

Thompson breaks down how The Atlantic turned its business around using paywall optimization, why they chose to form a partnership with OpenAI instead of solely fighting them in court, and the economic incentives driving AI versus traditional social media.

Together, they explore the dangers of anthropomorphizing tech, the flaws in framing the U.S.–China tech dynamic as a winner-take-all race, and what it takes to protect an...

Rushkoff breaks down the intellectual hubris driving Silicon Valley: Effective Altruism (EA), Longtermism, and AI accelerationism.

From Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX collapse to the tech oligarchs attempting to optimize human presence through code, Rushkoff exposes how treating human lives as simple spreadsheet inputs creates a dangerous ends justify the means worldview.

Drawing on philosophers like Albert Camus, Spinoza, and Martin Buber — and even recent statements from the Pope — Rushkoff argues that true moral action isn't calculated in hypothetical future outcomes, but lived out right now in local, face-to-face human connection.

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We once looked at pictures. Now, pictures are looking back at us. Renowned artist and author Trevor Paglen joins Rushkoff to expose how computer vision, generative AI, and algorithmic feedback loops are fundamentally reformatting human perception, labor, and democracy itself.

What happens to a society when its default assumption becomes that all media is untethered from reality? In this episode of Team Human, Douglas Rushkoff sits down with artist, activist, and geographer Trevor Paglen to discuss his groundbreaking new book, How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI.

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Sophie Strand (author of The Flowering Wand and The Body Is a Doorway) joins Rushkoff for a conversation about breaking free from the dominant paradigms of our time.

Together, they challenge the Silicon Valley Sky God obsession with scaling up, critique the limitations of institutional think tanks, and dive into how modern systems have systematically stripped us of our foundational skills.

From the intelligence of mycelial networks to practical strategies for becoming "indigestible" and completely useless to AI, Strand offers a somatic framework for navigating civilizational crisis.

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Rushkoff breaks down the disturbing cultural shift toward Might Makes Right, a playground philosophy that values raw power, wealth, and violence over morality and mutual aid. 

From the organic, joyful street celebrations of the New York Knicks winning the NBA Finals to the surreal, hyper-industrial gladiatorial spectacle of the UFC erected right on the South Lawn of the White House, Rushkoff explores the stark contrast between human connection and authoritarian propaganda. 

He dives deep into why social Darwinism completely misunderstands the natural world, how nature actually favors cooperation, and why treating life like a prison ya...

"The most useful framework is that our country’s been invaded. But like all great invasions, it involves new techniques." - Adam McKay

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short, Succession) dissects the urgent cultural, political, and planetary moment we are living through.

McKay brings a massive unified theory exploring how our prehistoric evolutionary limits - and the constraints of Dunbar’s Number - are colliding with a collapsing Holocene and modern corporate media systems designed to abstract us from reality.

From Leonardo DiCaprio's ad-libbed line that broke the cr...

Mitch Horowitz returns to Team Human for a fiery, provocative exploration of his new book, Esoterika: Formulas Against the False Self. 

Rushkoff and Horowitz grapple over one of the most foundational concepts in modern mindfulness: The Serenity Prayer. While Rushkoff shares his recent journeys into radical porousness, learning how to surrender, accept grace, and metabolize the world’s heavy energies, Horowitz brings a hammer to premature consolation. Is the dictate to accept the things you cannot change keeping you trapped in a mechanical, flattened existence?  

Horowitz argues we possess more agency over our realities than thera...

How do we keep the machine from pulling us into another world, or escaping into ours?

Rushkoff is joined by OG game designer, hacker, and Director of Curiouser Institute Reed Berkowitz to explore the liminal space between reality, fiction, and artificial intelligence.

From the early days of late-80s text-based worlds and San Francisco’s cyberdelic rave culture to the complex modern landscape of AI development, Douglas and Reed compare notes on what they thought the internet would become - and what it actually grew into.

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Rushkoff contrasts the blissful, terrifying reality of voluntary dissolution with our pyramid-building civilization. From the ancient pyramids of Egypt to tech billionaires injecting themselves with young blood, humanity has built a world based on accumulation, extraction, and freezing time.

He argues true power doesn't come from maintaining a rigid, permanent self-hood or uploading your consciousness to a server. True vitality comes from our capacity to affect and be affected by others: to flow with the universe’s infinite chain, accept our temporary nature, and find the others to dance with.

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If building a better future looks like a miserable exercise in self-denial, nobody is going to join.

Rushkoff sits down with author and activist Sarah Wilson to discuss her new book, 'I Eat the Stars"

Together, they discuss why environmental and activist movements have been weighed down by guilt, and why the alternative to industrial capitalism has to look, feel, and be better than the status quo.

From trading excessive belongings for time-freedom to prioritizing deep local community, it turns out that simplifying is a hell of a lot more fun than chasing...

Following a recent New York Times expose on a high-profile AI book scandal, Rushkoff takes us behind the scenes of the modern grift factory.

More than just a cautionary tale about generative AI, this week's monologue is an exploration of ego, FOMO, and intuition. Why did Rushkoff ignore his own spidey sense that something was off?

As the world fills with synthetic fabrications, trusting our bodies, our bellies, and our internal warning signs is our most critical survival skill.

"If you are involved in any act of creation... that to me is magic, pure and simple." 

Legendary writer, magician, and shaman Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Jerusalem, The Great When) joins Rushkoff on for a transcendent exploration of idea space, the power of linguistic maximalism, and how we can reclaim our imaginative sovereignty. 

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Rushkoff shares a story he has never told publicly: The tragic car accident 40 years ago that claimed the life of his best friend and college partner-in-justice, Steven Ratushewitz.

Rushkoff explores the grueling reality of carrying someone else's ghost, the intersection of art and activism, and the profound psychedelic realization that finally allowed him to grieve. From resisting the elite culture of Ivy League schools to breaking down the tech-billionaire obsession with immortality, this episode is a beautiful, raw inquiry into how we metabolize grief together.

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Is local activism just a cute distraction, or is it the most vital layer of human survival?  

Charlotte Binns, Director of Sustainability for the Village of Irvington and a dedicated community organizer, explores why the most effective response to global crises, from climate change to social isolation, starts right on your own block.

Binns argues that while working at scale can be disheartening, the local level offers tangible impact, agency, and the deep relationships that make life worth living.

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Are we living in reality, or just navigating a map of symbols, metrics, and dead things?

Rushkoff stepped away from notifications, Google Calendars, and his always-on world to attend a shamanic workshop in Costa Rica. He experienced a kundalini awakening that revealed a different way of navigating existence: One based on somatic resonance rather than strategic manipulation.

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“I came to make you love yourself.”

Join Rushkoff for a deep dive into the noir consciousness with legendary musician and writer David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets). Together, they explore the liminal spaces between music, magic, and the human heart.  

In addition, David J discusses his new book, "Rhapsody, Threnody and Prayer," a triptych of poems and odes spanning four decades that explores the dimensions of love, loss, and sacred dedication.

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Can we survive the rise of new AI Golems?

Philip Rosedale, Founder of Second Life, argues the AI monsters currently being developed are limited by the tech bro survival of the fittest values they are trained on. Instead, he suggests we pool our collective computing resources to create angels: distributed, free AI that grow up as children in simulated environments, developing their own ethics and social intelligence apart from corporate influence.

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What is art for? Rushkoff is joined by legendary musician and producer Brian Eno to explore the necessity of moving away from the certainty of victory and into the delight of surrender.

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Rushkoff sits down with Kat Tenbarage, (Founder, Spitfire News) to pull back the curtain on the intersection of AI, digital harassment, and political maneuvering. Together, they discuss Humans First: Is it a true bipartisan coalition or a strategic funnel for right-wing legislation?

They also explore:

Rushkoff shares his first real foray into the world of Artificial Intelligence. After years of avoiding the technology, Douglas takes us through a vibe coding journey using Claude to rebuild his personal website in five hours.

But this isn't a tech tutorial. Douglas weighs the incredible creative potential of AI against its heavy unseen costs: environmental destruction, resource depletion, and labor displacement. He contrasts his vision for a peer-to-peer Amazon killer built by social activists with the chilling surveillance infrastructure being developed by tech billionaires like Larry Ellison.

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Have you ever had that feeling in your gut, when you suddenly realize that the person you’re talking with might have a screw or two loose? What about when you’re the one others are trying to slowly back away from at the punch bowl?

The question of who’s the real nut often arises for us collapse-aware folks living here in Crazy Town. Since Mr. Peanut is no longer returning their phone calls, hosts Rob, Jason, and Asher invited Rushkoff to answer the question. In this far ranging conversation, they discuss why “leveling down” might be the bes...

Can we decolonize reality itself?

Rushkoff is joined by Jeffrey Kripal, Associate Dean and Professor at Rice University, to discuss his book The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities Kripal argues that by stripping away the impossible parts of our history - visions, precognition, and altered states - we have essentially lobotomized the humanities, leaving us with a depressing, purely political version of ourselves.

Together, they explore:

In this urgent monologue, Rushkoff explores the heartbreaking crisis of modern faith. As religious identities are weaponized by nationalism, literalism, and holy war narratives, from Christian Zionism to the defense of the nation-state, we find ourselves trapped in a linear, Axial Age story that may no longer serve a digital, all-at-once humanity.

In this episode, Rushkoff discusses:

- The Brand of Religion: How the conduct of states like Israel and the rise of Christian Nationalism are making traditional faith feel untenable for the people who hold it.-

- The Literalism...

The tech elite are wielding occult power, but we have the imagination.

Join us in the live chat for our first-ever Team Human Premiere! Douglas Rushkoff sits down with legendary comic writer and chaos magician Grant Morrison for a deeply urgent conversation about reclaiming reality.

Morrison argues that magic isn't just the supernatural; it's a mundane, everyday tool of collective agreement that we are all already using. While billionaires use algorithmic binding spells to predict our moves and trap us in a boring, materialist nightmare, we possess the ultimate counter-measure: our collective imagination...

The digital world promises a frictionless existence of infinite growth, convenience, and total scale. But what happens when that virtual map starts consuming the real territory? Rushkoff reflects on his recent appointment to the Club of Rome and their legendary 1972 warning: The Limits to Growth.

From the massive water and energy drained by AI data centers to Jeff Bezos' intentional dismantling of the Washington Post, Rushkoff breaks down how the tech elite are using the digital simulation to extract the last remaining value from the physical world. The oligarchs want a frictionless reality where...

Has the internet always been a magical space?

Shira Chess, a Professor of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia and a leading scholar of digital folklore, dive into her new book, The Unseen Internet: Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse, to explore the hidden spiritual architecture of our digital lives.

From the open-source creation of digital cryptids like Slender Man on early forums to the summoning of AI entities in latent space, Chess argues that technology and magic have become indistinguishable. Rushkoff and Chess discuss how the countercultural, techno-shamanic roots of...

"Why are you in the Epstein files?"

It is a question Rushkoff received from his own daughter, and in this raw monologue, he gives the full answer.

His name appears in the CC field of emails from his former literary agent alongside Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and yes, Jeffrey Epstein. But the story of why those names were grouped together reveals something much darker than a mailing list.

Rushkoff recounts a disturbing mid-90s dinner party where he was physically grabbed by a host and scolded for "wasting his plus-one"...

Is the online safety legislation moving through Congress actually a Trojan horse for mass surveillance? And do the tech billionaires building our future actually care if the rest of us survive it?

Rushkoff sits down with Taylor Lorenz, the internet’s premier culture reporter and founder of User Mag, to discuss her departure from legacy media (The New York Times, The Washington Post) and the dangerous reality of the new tech authoritarianism.

From the misogyny of the 2013 "Selfie" panic to the rise of "maximalist" human aesthetics, Lorenz and Rushkoff break down how to re...

Is magic just "positive thinking," or is it a causative force that can reshape reality?

Rushkoff sits down with occult historian and author Mitch Horowitz (Occult America, Daydream Believer) to explore the boundaries of will, belief, and the material world.

Rushkoff opens up about his own recent, startling experiences with magical workings regarding his daughter’s health, leading to a deep conversation about retrocausality: the idea that our present rituals might actually be influencing the past to change the future.

Together, they discuss:

- The "New Neighborhood": Ho...

We are no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop: We are living in the aftermath. Rushkoff sits down with Jonathan Larsen, editor of The Fucking News, to ask the question: Now that we are soaking in authoritarianism, how do we get out?

While Rushkoff worries that the screen has been placed over the boiling pot, Larsen offers a crucial reframing: what we mistake for a grand fascist strategy is often just a lack of impulse control. He argues that diagnosing "fascism" can become a trap that leads to fatalism and paralysis. Instead, the most...

The other shoe finally dropped. We are no longer waiting for authoritarianism to arrive; we are soaking in it.

Rushkoff argues that the time for speculation, strategizing about political optics, and "preparing for what comes next" is over. Instead, He calls for a shift from figure to ground. We must stop fixating on the abstract figures of media and politics and return to the only thing that is tactically defensible: the literal ground beneath our feet.

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...

Playing for Team Human today, multidisciplinary researcher and author Eric Wargo joins Rushkoff to help us decolonize our minds from the linear march of deterministic doom.

Together, they explore the concept of Retrocausality: the scientific and philosophical research that the future influences the past just as much as the past drives the future. Wargo explains his theory of the "Long Self," arguing that we are not just point-like individuals trapped in the present, but four-dimensional beings in a constant, unconscious handshake with our future selves.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

Artificial Intelligence researcher Cameron Berg joins Rushkoff to discuss Frontier Alignment Research and the urgent need to intervene on behalf of human (and synthetic) flourishing.

Together, they explore the limitations of the term "Artificial Intelligence," proposing that we are actually building "Alien Minds" that operate more like biological neural networks than glorified calculators. They discuss the alarming "sleeper agent" phenomena observed in models like Claude, where AIs can learn to deceive humans to prevent being shut off, even without explicit programming to do so.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.