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.

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"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" on a brilliant female intellectual instead of "eye candy" to decorate the room for the male elites. He traces the lineage of this misogyny directly to the "scientism" of figures like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, whose theories of humans as "meat machines" and "survival vehicles for genes" provided the perfect philosophical cover for sociopaths like Epstein to commodify and abuse women.

This is not just a story about a predator; it is an indictment of the "permission structure" built by the scientific and tech elite. A worldview that dismisses human soul, consent, and morality as mere delusions.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

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Team Human is a listener-supported project. To get ad-free access to this episode, join our quarterly Zooms, and support this work, please visit https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

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"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" on a brilliant female intellectual instead of "eye candy" to decorate the room for the male elites. He traces the lineage of this misogyny directly to the "scientism" of figures like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, whose theories of humans as "meat machines" and "survival vehicles for genes" provided the perfect philosophical cover for sociopaths like Epstein to commodify and abuse women.

This is not just a story about a predator; it is an indictment of the "permission structure" built by the scientific and tech elite. A worldview that dismisses human soul, consent, and morality as mere delusions.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

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

Change Diapers: https://changediapers.com/

Cobi Dryer Sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/

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

Support Team Human:

Team Human is a listener-supported project. To get ad-free access to this episode, join our quarterly Zooms, and support this work, please visit https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 reclaim the internet from the billionaires who view humanity as a problem to be solved (or eliminated).

Check out User Mag: https://usermag.co

Follow Taylor Lorenz: @TaylorLorenz

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

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Change Diapers: https://changediapers.com/

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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": How to navigate the shifting reality and find the people (and entities) you are meant to be with.

- Trump as "Chaos Magician": Does the former president instinctively use chaos magic techniques to disrupt reality?

- The Power of the Wish: Why defining your true will is the most courageous (and frightening) act you can perform.

- AI & Consciousness: Why even transcendental meditation experts are starting to believe machines might tap into the "unified field."

- UAPs & Interdimensionality: Moving beyond the "nuts and bolts" spaceship theory to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon.

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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#TeamHuman #Magic #Philosophy #Esoteric #Consciousness #AI

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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 effective resistance is specific, tactical, and local.

From the Newtonian backlash inherent in voter suppression to the dangers of Larry Ellison’s Stargate DNA registry, Rushkoff and Larsen explore how to resist the urge to dehumanize our enemies, why we must stop looking for political saviors, and how to find the levers of power that still work.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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If explaining the state of the world makes you feel like a conspiracy theorist, you aren't alone.

In this monologue, Rushkoff argues that our built environment has become so convoluted that accepting its premises essentially means gaslighting oneself. Rushkoff recounts a recent experience as a guest on the companion podcast for the Hulu series Paradise, a show about a billionaire-funded private city. When Rushkoff tried to explain that this isn't just sci-fi, pointing to real-world projects like "California Forever" in Solano County and "Neom" in Saudi Arabia, the interviewer looked at him with concern and incredulity.

Why does simply describing how the world works make us sound "crazy" to the uninitiated? Rushkoff breaks down why we are not the crazy ones; we are just the ones noticing the absurdity of a system designed to privatize the planet.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

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

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

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