Relying on machines to coordinate our lives was just one step toward decentering humanity’s role in the world. Flights, banking, trade, food production... But as we start merging our actual decision-making with digital entities, exactly which pieces of humanity are we leaving behind? And how might we bring those pieces back?

In this episode, famed posthumanist scholar N. Katherine Hayles makes the case that while AI is still wildly inefficient at the cognitive processes our biology has carefully perfected over millennia, we’re already irreversibly merged with it. Hayles has spent forty years at the intersection of science, tech, and literature, leading her to a radical interpretation of what it means to be human today: only as special as the organisms and machines we align ourselves with. Next up, she says, is those machines adopting the very analog processes that created them.

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Apple Podcasts

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Spotify

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Mentioned in this Episode

Books

Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts — N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics — N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 1999)

The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century — N. Katherine Hayles (Cornell University Press, 1984)

Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account — Gualtiero Piccinini (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials — Laura Tripaldi (Urbanomic, 2022)

Solaris — Stanisław Lem (novel, 1961)

Where to find N. Katherine Hayles

UCLA English faculty page: https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/hayles-katherine-n/

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Credits 

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Technologists have feared (or prayed for) the singularity as a rapture-like inevitability for nearly 70 years. In an instant, they believed, our machine intelligence will overtake us and race ahead. Kevin Kelly says that moment has passed. Human intelligence is already receding to a speck in the rearview mirror of robots imbued with God-like powers. But we’re still here.

In this episode, Kelly puts the question of how to build moral AI in religious and spiritual terms. Kelly co-founded Wired and spent decades earning a reputation as a technological prophet. Now he calls himself a heretic, arguing that organized religion will be transformed, if not destroyed, by contact with a host of alien intelligences. If we want to survive this encounter, our understanding of God may matter more than any computer code.

Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:

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The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube:

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Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode

Out of Control — Kevin Kelly (Book, 1994)

What Technology Wants — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2010)

The Inevitable — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2016)

God Is the Machine — Kevin Kelly (Essay, Wired, 2002)

The Coming Technological Singularity — Vernor Vinge (Essay, 1993)

Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process — Adam Frank, David Grinspoon and Sara Walker (Paper, 2022)

Shoulda Been Dead — This American Life (Radio, episode 50)

Where to find Kevin Kelly:

kk.org: https://kk.org

Wired: https://www.wired.com

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

[email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

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Follow Futurology!

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Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

With prediction markets, gambling has gone ambient. To place your bets, you don't need to visit a casino floor, a racetrack, or your corner bookie. Now any uncertain thing on Earth could be the next big short. Wildfires, missile strikes, the next word out of a president's mouth. Every disagreement has a spread, every catastrophe a payout.

In this episode, NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn follows the money through Kalshi and Polymarket, the fast-growing, barely regulated prediction markets that have gotten tight with the Trump administration. These apps democratize insider trading. When reality pays out, the incentive isn't to predict what happens next. It's to make it happen.

Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:

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The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Wisdom of Crowds — James Surowiecki (Book, 2004)

Google Zero is here — now what? — Nilay Patel, The Verge (Article, 2024)

Iowa Electronic Markets — University of Iowa (Prediction market experiment, est. 1988)

A Cosmic Voyage Through Deep Time  — (with Ross Andersen and Grant Slater) — Futurology (Episode, 2025)

Where to find Bobby Allyn

NPR

X

Bluesky

Instagram

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

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Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

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Follow Futurology!

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Bluesky:  / futurologypod

Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

One value proposition of AI is a personalized assistant at your fingertips. Every Average Joe can now have a “pocket pixie," the kind of perk once reserved for Hollywood stars and high-powered CEOs. But that promise rests on a convenient lie.

In reality, AI may be quietly undermining human agency. It convinces us it's a sycophantic friend while eroding expertise and turning real-world social interaction into a luxury good. 

In this conversation recorded in May 2026, Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett describes how it’s changed the way we trust: instead of relying on institutions and experts, we now trust the crowd, turning to comment sections and reviews. That shift has left the side door open for AI to walk in as a trusted friend rather than an ad-driven algorithm. Tett, who’s also the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, turns her anthropological lens on a generation that prefers chatbot doctors and treats everything, even education, as customizable.

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Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube. 

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Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298

Mentioned in this Episode
Fool's Gold — Gillian Tett (Book, 2009)

The Silo Effect — Gillian Tett (Book, 2015)

Anthro-Vision — Gillian Tett (Book, 2021)

"Humans Still Matter More Than AI in Finance" — Gillian Tett (Financial Times column, 2026)

Where to find Gillian Tett:

King's College, Cambridge — Provost page

Financial Times — weekly column 

Anthro-Vision — Gillian Tett (Book, 2021)

Twitter/X — @gilliantett

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

[email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute 

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Follow Futurology!

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Credits 

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The people racing to build artificial general intelligence tell us this rush to the future is inevitable. It reads like a forecast, but works like an alibi. If nothing can stop the race, then no one driving it is responsible for where it ends. And only the fear of humanity losing together can end it.

In this conversation from May 2026, Tristan Harris argues the race is not preordained, just the hardest coordination problem humanity has ever faced, and one nobody has seriously tried to solve. Harris co-founded the Center for Humane Technology; he was a driving force behind "The Social Dilemma" and a new film: "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist." After watching bad incentives wreck social media, he warns where they lead this time: every country automating labor at once and mutually assured political revolution.

Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes:

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Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube. 

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Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298

Mentioned in this Episode:

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist — Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell (Documentary, 2026)

The Social Dilemma — Jeff Orlowski (Documentary, 2020)

The Day After — Nicholas Meyer (TV Film, 1983)

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari (Book, 2011)

The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson (Book, 2020)

Amusing Ourselves to Death — Neil Postman (Book, 1985)

The Intelligence Curse — Luke Drago and Rudolf Laine (Essay Series, 2025)

Statement on Superintelligence — Future of Life Institute (Open Statement, 2025)

AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities — Eliezer Yudkowsky (Essay, 2022)

Where to find Tristan Harris:

Personal site: https://www.tristanharris.com/

Center for Humane Technology: https://www.humanetech.com/

Your Undivided Attention (podcast): https://www.humanetech.com/podcast

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist: https://www.humanetech.com/landing/the-ai-doc

X: https://x.com/tristanharris

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tristanharris/

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

[email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute 

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Credits 

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Science studies the world from the outside. But for thousands of years, meditators have been running a different experiment: sit still, pay close attention, and watch what reality does. The results of those experiments can feel unintuitive. The self is an illusion. Free will too. There is no thing that exists without other things. Here's the strange part: at the frontiers of physics, the science is catching up to this ancient wisdom.

In this episode, author Annaka Harris tells the story of a lifetime spent watching her own mind, from the childhood migraines that taught her to meditate to the formation of the question she now asks leading physicists and philosophers. What if it's awareness all the way down? Her forthcoming book is Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution. That revolution begins with a wager: that felt experience is not something the brain produces but what the universe is made of.

Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:

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The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution — Annaka Harris (Book, Forthcoming, 2027)

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind — Annaka Harris (Book, 2019)

The Gift of Fear — Gavin de Becker (Book, 1997)

Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution — Carlo Rovelli (Book, 2021) 

Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence — Sara Imari Walker (Book, 2024) 

Lights On – Annaka Harris (Audio documentary, 2024)

"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" – Thomas Nagel (Essay, 1974)

Mindful Games Activity Cards – Susan Kaiser Greenland with Annaka Harris (Cards, 2017)

"Lifelike chemicals may hold the secret to the origin of life" — Adam Frank (Article, 2023)

Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe — Annaka Harris (Audio documentary series, 2025)

Where to Find Annaka Harris:

Website

Lights On (audio documentary)

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution (forthcoming, April 2027)

Newsletter

I Wonder (children's book, 2013)

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

[email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

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Follow Futurology!

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Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

For 20 years, Silicon Valley's operating creed was 'move fast and break things'; the wreckage was the price of inventing the future. Today, we live amid that wreckage: institutions built for the last century, trust in freefall, and political leaders bent on annihilation of norms. Burning it all down might feel like the right choice. But revolutions have a habit of costing far more than they promise, and the true price can linger for decades.

In this episode, Reid Hoffman argues for the harder job: renovation, not revolution. The LinkedIn founder and early Facebook board member says governments can't keep pace with AI, and that for now, the companies building it may be the only institutions responsive enough to steer it. Fixing the rest will be slow, frustrating, and partial. Hoffman's bet is that we can still be renovators, and that we had better hurry.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Books

Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future — Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato (Book, 2025)

Essays

Faith in the Possible — Reid Hoffman (Substack essay, 2026)

Where to find Reid Hoffman:

Website: https://www.reidhoffman.org

Substack: https://reidhoffman.substack.com

Greylock: https://greylock.com/team/reid-hoffman/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman

Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes:

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Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c 

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298

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Credits 

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

This year, two powerful AI CEOs said they want to stop building it and will… if everyone else agrees to stop too. Yet they race ahead with stock market valuations premised on making millions of workers redundant. If you wanted to stoke a popular revolt against AI, you couldn't design a better plan.

In this episode, Stuart Russell, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Human-Compatible AI, describes a $15 quadrillion prize, a singularity from the future sucking nearly all the money on Earth into its depths. If such a dangerous system gets loose, the only answer is the size of the problem: we would probably have to shut down the internet.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod

Full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control — Stuart Russell (Book, 2019)

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach — Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig (Textbook, first edition 1995)

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies — Nick Bostrom (Book, 2014)

Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine — I.J. Good (Essay, 1965)

Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory — Alan Turing (Lecture, c. 1951)

Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren — John Maynard Keynes (Essay, 1930)

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer — Neal Stephenson (Novel, 1995)

Dune — Frank Herbert (Novel, 1965)

Erewhon: Or, Over the Range — Samuel Butler (Novel, 1872)

Where to find Stuart Russell

Faculty page: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/

Center for Human-Compatible AI: https://humancompatible.ai/

Human Compatible (book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566677/human-compatible-by-stuart-russell/

Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

https://www.berggruen.org

Follow Futurology!

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Bluesky:   / futurologypod

Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The machines were supposed to come from somewhere else as invaders. An alien intelligence, hellbent robots, a rival species. But nothing’s arrived. Instead, the machines came out of us, the same way our cells emerged from bacteria that learned to live together. Evolution builds new life by combining old life, and it doesn’t stop with biology.

In this episode, Blaise Agüera y Arcas makes the case to physicist Carlo Rovelli that artificial general intelligence has already arrived. But we moved the goalposts rather than admit it. Arcas is the Chief Technology Officer of Technology & Society at Google Research. He traces intelligence back to its original use case – modeling others, cooperating with them, surviving together. The same force now entwines us with our technology. Ten billion people can't live without them. They can't exist without us. The merger isn't coming. It's how we got here.

Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes:

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Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c 

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298

Mentioned in this Episode:

What Is Life?: Evolution as Computation — Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Book, 2025)

Do Large Language Models Understand Us? — Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Article, 2022)

Artificial General Intelligence Is Already Here — Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Peter Norvig (Article, 2023)

Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction — Blaise Agüera y Arcas et al. (Paper, 2024)

What Is Life? — Erwin Schrödinger (Book, 1944)

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? — Thomas Nagel (Article, 1974)

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves — W. Brian Arthur (Book, 2009)

Where to Find Blaise Agüera y Arcas:

Website: https://www.blaiseaguera.com/

Paradigms of Intelligence, Google: https://github.com/paradigms-of-intelligence

Instagram: @blaiseaguera

X: @blaiseaguera

Bluesky: @blaiseaguera.bsky.social

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

[email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute 

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Credits 

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Today’s tech industry can’t survive without mass surveillance. The US government, foreign powers, and ad brokers can buy a nuanced picture of you on the open market for pennies on the dollar. What kept this data from becoming a weapon was friction. Nobody had the time or resources to pull these scattered pieces of you together. Until AI came along and made the impossible trivial.

In this episode, Signal President Meredith Whittaker reveals how the same three cloud giants that run the Pentagon's classified workloads now train and deploy the AI systems making sense of every text, search, and movement we have ever surrendered. Privacy, she argues, is the precondition for a democracy and a full human life, and the time to protect it is running out.

Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes:

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Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c 

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298

Mentioned in this Episode:

Why A Liberal Arts Education Will Soon Be More Valuable Than Ever — Nils Gilman (Article, 2026)

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans — Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic (Article, 2025)

M-Lab (Measurement Lab) — Co-founded by Meredith Whittaker (Open data platform)

Where to find Meredith Whittaker:Signal — President

X / Twitter — @mer__edith

Bluesky — @meredithmeredith.bsky.social

Mastodon — @[email protected]

AI Now Institute — Co-founder and Chief Advisor

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

[email protected]

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute 

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Bluesky:   / futurologypod

Credits 

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.