RUSHKOFF

Playing for Team Human today, professor, scholar, and activist Ananya Roy.

Ananya will be showing us how the fight for global social justice, often begins at home.

Roy has been working with Occupy Wall Street’s Micah White (Team Human Ep. 04) on a course about housing inequality for the Activist Graduate School, and is a professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare at UCLA, where she is also director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Her book Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development unearthed the counter-revolutionary agenda embedded in many so-called “development” programs. She looks at global poverty from a truly global perspective, which sometimes means the inequality in our own back yards and highway underpasses.

In this conversation, Ananya and Douglas explore what it means to be a “double agent” as activists, educators, and instigators of social change. Ananya shares wisdom on the ways we might overcome our compromised positions as situated in systems of colonial, racial, and economic oppression . She asks us to imagine how these spaces of contradiction and complicity might be transformed into spaces of empowerment. While “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house, the master’s tools can certainly occupy the master house.”

Join Douglas and Ananya for this master class poverty, housing, student activism, and the everyday work of building solidarity in our community and beyond.

Today’s show opens with a monologue looking at the cycle of technological innovation as it relates to the human condition. “Our media and technologies have been undermining our social bonds for centuries. So, what’s different now? Is this digital alienation the same thing amplified, or is something else going on?”

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium, featuring expanded versions of the monologues you hear each week opening the show.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid-show you heard R.U. Sirius’s President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time and Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” (See Team Human Episode 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.) Our outro features the Mike Watt’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Order Team Human the book and manifesto, now available everywhere!

Playing for Team Human today; Aaron Gell. Aaron is an editor at large for Medium and an instructor for NYU's Prison Education Project.

Aaron will show us how listening and sharing stories can be the key to cultivating empathy. His long-form journalism finds the humanity in even the most compromised and contemptible of characters. In this episode, Douglas and Aaron invite you to eavesdrop into their conversation as they explore the ways stories can connect us. In this moment, when we face existential crisis from many directions, Gell asserts that empathy is an imperative if we are going to preserve our humanity.

We’re in this story together. 

Douglas opens with a monologue on how the end of the Mueller investigation is the opportunity to do a political reset. Being anti-trump is not enough. "Just as Trump’s administration became something of a cult, with subordinates taking increasingly daring and untenable positions in order to win his approval, the anti-Trump movement has become a cult of conspiracy psychosis."

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium, featuring expanded versions of the monologues you hear each week opening the show.

Check out these stories from Aaron on Medium https://medium.com/@aarongell

“How to Survive a Midlife Crisis: Drugs, Dance Music, and Free Love”

I ditched my wife and kids to party in the woods with 250 sex-positive millennials

https://medium.com/s/youthnow/drinking-the-kool-aid-857cfe8c8c96

“Love is a Battlefield”

Hardcore military role players meet regularly to act out the Second Civil War. I strapped on an AR-15 and headed downrange

https://medium.com/s/love-hate/a-dispatch-from-the-second-civil-war-835635943c53

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid-show you heard R.U. Sirius’s President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time and Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” (See Team Human Episode 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.) Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Order Team Human the book and manifesto, now available everywhere!

Playing for Team Human today: musician, investor, reformer, and the author of Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe, Roger McNamee.

Roger will be talking about his mentorship of Mark Zuckerberg and what went wrong. Was it naive idealism? The imperatives of growth-driven capitalism? Greed? Rushkoff and McNamee look at how things have derailed and what must be done to reclaim the driver’s seat for technologies run amok.

“There are no rules today.” McNamee warns of online surveillance and the increasing power of behavioral modification. We’ve gone from being exploited as “the product” to becoming “fuel for the fire.”

Join Douglas and Roger for a behind-the-scenes look at what is driving these powerful and pernicious platforms.

Douglas opens with a monologue proposing a hypothetical. What if Zuckerberg had stayed in school? Would a little more study of history, literature, or a few more ethics courses have prevented the Facebook catastrophe?

This special episode of Team Human was recorded live in front of a studio audience in collaboration with WNYC’s Podcast Mixtape at the Greene Space. Look for future live dates on teamhuman.fm.

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium, featuring expanded versions of the monologues you hear each week opening the show.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid show you heard Roger McNamee's band Moonalice. Our outro features Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Live Photos thanks to @EDLphotography

Playing for Team Human Today is lifelong activist, warrior, and witch Blaed Spence AND writer, professor, and author of Slow Media, Jennifer Rauch.

Today’s show continues our ‘live from the road’ series as Douglas brings Team Human to the Bunk Bar in Portland, Oregon for an event in collaboration with XRAY radio.

Douglas opens with a monologue arguing that politics are still stuck in the television age. What might politics look like when we are not reduced to mere spectators but instead become engaged as active participants?(@1min30s)

Blaed Spence joins Douglas on stage for a conversation about the subversive act of looking away from our screens and into each other’s eyes. For Spence, it’ about embracing the opportunity for the awe, wonderment, imagination, and ultimately, true connection. (starts at @12min30s)

Author and professor Jennifer Rauch then joins the stage asking us to imagine ourselves as more than just “eyeballs and wallets.” Like Spence, Rauch argues that looking away from our devices and engaging in Slow Media practices creates the space for us to use all media more thoughtfully and autonomously. “We’ve internalized the logic of faster, more efficient, more production, but there is a whole world of experience that is beyond quantification.” (starts @ 39mins)

This episode ends with a group conversation and audience Q&A. (@67mins)

More on our guests:

Blaed Spence is a lifelong activist, warrior, and witch — a change-agent who’s worked extensively with Starhawk and the Reclaiming Collective in the U.S. and Canada; an alum of the Apple Multimedia Lab, founding partner of Wired Magazine, Senior Designer at Paul Allen’s Interval Research; and an operative of the rEvolution working to dismantle the patriarchy and predatory capitalism from within the belly of the beast.

Jennifer Rauch is the author of Slow Media: Why Slow is Satisfying, Sustainable, and Smart and a Professor of Journalism & Communication Studies at Long Island University Brooklyn. Her writing has been published in the Huffington Post, Medium, and Urban Audubon.

Check out Rushkoff’s regular column on Medium for essay versions of this and other show monologues.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid show you heard R.U. Sirius’s President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time and Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” (See Team Human Episode 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.) Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Order Team Human the book and manifesto, now available everywhere!

Playing for Team Human today: award-winning journalist, activist, and author of No Is Not Enough, This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, and most recently, The Battle For Paradise, Naomi Klein.

Klein and Rushkoff share a conversation about moving beyond the ideology of individualism. It’s a discussion about what it means, in concrete terms, to forge solidarity with others. Klein finds hope in people’s ability to overcome divides by working together, in common labor, on a common project. One example Klein celebrates is the Green New Deal with its multifaceted and intersectional approach to solving the triple threat of climate crisis, economic inequality, and the surge of racist nationalism. Speaking live on stage at WNYC's the Greene Space, Klein and Rushkoff make a case for humanizing the universal project of saving our planet. After all, the survival of life on earth is a “big tent” under which we all can and must organize.

This special episode of Team Human was recorded live in front of a studio audience in collaboration with WNYC’s Podcast Mixtape at the Greene Space. Join us live next week, Monday March 4th, for another live Team Human taping at the Greene Space with original Facebook investor and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, Roger McNamee. McNamee’s new book Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe takes a critical look at Facebook and the deep rooted problems of the Silicon Valley ethos.

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium, featuring expanded versions of the monologues you hear each week opening the show.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid show you heard R.U. Sirius’s President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time. Our outro features Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Photo credit: @EDLphotography

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” politics that pit cities and states against each other.

Rushkoff, just back from book tour in the UK, opens the show discussing a great awakening happening across the globe. Thousands of children in Great Britain walked out of school in protest of inaction on climate change. Here at home, grassroots activists won a powerful victory against Amazon and their proposed HQ2 in Queens (listen to last week's show with activists Amy Herzog and Jacinta Gonzalez). Meanwhile establishment pundits and politicians continue to dismiss these efforts as naive or foolish. What does this ridicule tell us about this revolutionary moment we are in? 

You can find versions of Rushkoff’s monologues as well as archives of this show on Medium.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid show was Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” (See Team Human Episode 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.) Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Order Team Human the manifesto, now available everywhere! 

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’s “cloud industrial complex.” We’ll look at how surveillance technologies like Amazon’s Rekognition are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to programs that antagonize vulnerable communities. 

Jacinta and Amy give Team Human listeners a critical and concrete look at the multiple intersections between our technology giants, police-state enforcement policies, and the long history of corporate profiteering on the backs of marginalized peoples. 

Jacinta Gonzalez is field director for Mijente, a group organizing Latinx communities around issues of immigration, detention, and deportation. Mijente has a wealth of resources and information. To learn more about the Cloud Industrial Complex, check out Mijente’s report Who’s Behind Ice and link back to Mijente.net for links to more actions, petitions, and ways to get involved. 

https://ice.tech.blog/ is also a tremendous hub of information about the growing relationship between big tech and lucrative government contracts to equip ICE.

Amy Herzog is a media historian whose research spans a broad range of interdisciplinary subjects. She is Professor of Media Studies at Queens College and a faculty member in the Departments of Theatre and Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as the programs in Film Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies. She has also taught as Visiting Associate Professor at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. She is a co-founder of @NoAmazonAmazons. 

In the News:

Tech firms make millions from Trump's anti-immigrant agenda, report finds:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/23/silicon-valley-tech-firms-making-money-trump-anti-immigrant-agenda-report

Amazon is the invisible backbone behind ICE’s immigration crackdown:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612335/amazon-is-the-invisible-backbone-behind-ices-immigration-crackdown/

Facial Recognition and Voice Recognition via the Intercept:

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/15/amazon-echo-voice-recognition-accents-alexa/

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/30/amazon-facial-recognition-police-military/

Douglas opens the show asking if we are taking the wrong approach in our communication about climate change? Can we move people away from feeling powerless to effect change and shape the future? What if we said, “Climate change is about to be defeated! Now is the time to go all in. Don’t miss the opportunity!” instead?

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium for essay versions of this and other show monologues.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid show was Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” See Team Human Episode 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Order Team Human the book and manifesto, now available everywhere! 

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.

Douglas begins with a monologue reflecting back on the classic lesson from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, "You are special just the way you are.” Updating this wise old maxim for a digital age, Rushkoff asserts:

You are not just the inputs and outputs.

You are not just the value you create for the market.

You are not just the metrics that we have of your worth or your “net worth.”

You are not just your utility value.

So what does make humans so special? How do we reassert our inherent value the digital age? Join in on this live conversation to hear a hope-filled and provocative exploration of topics from the newly released Team Human manifesto.

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid show you heard R.U. Sirius’s President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time. Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Photo credit: @EDLphotography

More on this event:

WWNorton, Civic Hall, and the Team Human podcast celebrate the launch of Douglas Rushkoff's new book, Team Human.

Team Human is a manifesto―a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together―not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups. We are creating machine intelligences with the express purpose of controlling human thought and behavior.

Team Human delivers a call to arms. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognize that being human is a team sport. In Rushkoff’s own words: “Being social may be the whole point.” Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology, and psychology, Rushkoff shows that when we work together we realize greater happiness, productivity, and peace. If we can find the others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity ― together―we can make the world a better place to be human.

Hosted by

Siobhan O'Connoris the VP of editorial at Medium, an author, journalist, speaker, and strategist. She was a speaker at the Aspen Ideas festival and is the former executive editor of Time Magazine.

Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist, author, documentarian, and world-renowned public intellectual who has spent his prolific career thinking about how new media and technology are impacting culture and the economy. Named one of the world’s 10 most influential thinkers by MIT, Rushkoff has written 15 bestselling books and coined such concepts as “viral media,” “social currency,” and “digital natives.”

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 the rise of Trumpism that would otherwise implicate the neoliberal policies of democrats and conservatives alike, foreign policy think tanks, and the media. It’s a Team Human conversation that may play along a divide among listeners, but no matter where you fall on the question of collusion, Maté offers a thought provoking perspective on the dangers of this media obsession. Is the Russia fixation a media virus that our cultural immune system hasn't yet built the appropriate immune response to?

Opening the show, Rushkoff offers another perspective on media viruses, looking at the way the Covington Catholic incident played out on social media and in the news last week. Rushkoff argues, “We are living in a media landscape where whoever can most convincingly say what a picture really is wins. Whoever names the meme, wins the meme.” Check out Rushkoff’s recent piece on the topic at CNN. 

Aaron Maté's work can be found at the Nation and via Twitter @aaronjmate

Team Human the manifesto is out now. Order your copy here or visit your favorite local book store.

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium.

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. Thank you so much! You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid Show you heard R.U. Sirius's President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time. Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

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 conversation.

It’s a talk launched by a question that cuts to the heart of the book itself – How have technologies meant to connect us come to alienate and atomize us instead? Douglas and Seth share why we must reclaim connection and Find the Others.

“It’s not too late! We can retrieve what it means to be human in a digital age.”

Join Douglas, Seth and the live Betaworks Studios audience for this invocation of the spirit of community and solidarity so desperately needed in this pivotal moment in the human story.

A special thanks to Betaworks Studios and all those who attended this event.

Photos by @ErikVPhoto. Check out the full album http://beta.works/2De372c

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium.

You can support Team Human on Patreon. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.