RUSHKOFF

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:

• The economy of deepfakes: How non-consensual AI-generated content is being monetized and the role of major payment processors like Visa and MasterCard play in the ecosystem.
• Digital Violence: Why the "online isn't real" argument is dead and how digital radicalization leads to physical acts of terror.
• The Cost of Truth: The personal and legal toll of investigating influencer harm and the coordinated smear campaigns designed to silence independent journalists.

Support Kat Tenbarge's Spitfire news: SpitfireNews.com

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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 best strategy for navigating late stage capitalism and bringing ourselves back into right relationship with each other and the planet.

You can stream and subscribe to Crazy Town wherever you get your podcasts.

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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:

• The Secular Flatland: Moving beyond a strictly materialist worldview that reduces human beings to data points.
• The Vertical Dimension: Why extraordinary experiences are more common than we admit and how they serve as a first-person way of knowing the world.
• The Marketing Problem: Why the humanities should embrace the "Superhuman" to reclaim their transformative, ecstatic power.
• Reality Hacking: How literature and art function as non-specific amplifiers for consciousness.

It’s time to put the weird back on the table and acknowledge that the human experience is far more fantastic than our current systems allow.

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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 Trap: Why treating a transcendental narrative as a "real estate deed" kills the spiritual project.

- Media Theory of God: How the shift from the Age of the Book to a new media environment requires us to graduate from religion rather than be destroyed by it.

- The Two Anti-Semitisms: Navigating the crossfire between the Right’s hatred of "globalists" and the Left’s critique of colonialism.

Is it time to retire these ancient institutional containers before they lead us to a self-fulfilling Armageddon? Or can we retrieve the living, human layers of our faiths and bring them forward into a new, restorative context?

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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.Finding the others is no longer enough. It's time to stop being NPCs in someone else's sterile simulation and start authoring our own pro-human reality.

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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 they own the platform and avoid the messy negotiations of actual human connection. But reall life, and real democracy, requires friction. It requires the awkward, inefficient, and vital collisions of human beings sharing a local space. It is time to stop confusing the map with the territory. Find the others. Embrace the friction.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

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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 the 1990s internet (including the Mondo 2000 era) transformed into today’s algorithm-driven corporate landscape, and how we might reclaim our agency by finding subversive ways to use these technologies.

They also unpack algorithmic conspirituality, exploring why we treat our social media feeds like modern-day oracles, and how meme magic has evolved from an online joke into a force that shapes political reality. Ultimately, is our digital occultism a path to liberation, or just a new way to decorate our corporate cages?

Substack: Subscribe to The Unseen Internet at https://unseeninternet.substack.com/

Book: Get The Unseen Internet: Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse wherever books are sold.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

Learn more about Everyone's Earth: https://everyonesearth.com/

Change Diapers: https://changediapers.com/

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Use the code “rush10” to receive 10% off of Cobi Dryer sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/

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