The Jim Rutt Show

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What's The Jim Rutt Show about?

Crisp conversations with critical thinkers at the leading edge of science, technology, politics, and social systems.

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EP 165 Lene Rachel Andersen...

09.22.2022

Jim talks with Lene Rachel Andersen in the first of a two-part series about her new book Libertism: Grasping the 21st Century. They discuss rediscovering the word libertism, hypermodernity vs. metamodernity, combining experience from different epochs in fruitful ways, distinguishing ...

The Jim Rutt Show episodes:

09.22.2022 EP 165 Lene Rachel Andersen Part 1: Libertism Jim talks with Lene Rachel Andersen in the first of a two-part series about her new book Libertism: Grasping the 21st Century. They discuss rediscovering the word libertism, hypermodernity vs. metamodernity, combining experience from different epochs in fruitful ways, distinguishing ...
09.22.2022 Currents 068: Jonathan Rowson on the Chess Drama Jim talks with Grandmaster chess player and philosopher Jonathan Rowson about the recent drama between Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann in the Champions Chess Tour. They discuss Rowson's chess background, the bare facts of the kerfuffle, Niemann's persona & career ...
09.19.2022 EP 164 John Markoff on the Many Lives of Stewart Brand Jim talks with John Markoff about his new biography, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. They discuss the meme of Brand as a Zelig, his role as a catalyst, the Pace Layers model, why Brand wasn't a pure ...
08.25.2022 EP 163 Benedict Beckeld on Western Self-Contempt Jim talks with Benedict Beckeld about his new book Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations. They discuss the meaning of oikophobia—hatred of one's homeland—its recurrence throughout history, the prevalence of oikophobia in the U.S., a continuum from xenophobia ...
08.15.2022 EP 162 Max Borders on Decentralism Jim talks with recurring guest Max Borders about the ideas in his new book The Decentralist: Mission, Morality, and Meaning in the Age of Crypto. They discuss happiness as a common ground, a eudaimonistic sensibility, the marshmallow experiment & deferred ...
07.25.2022 Currents 067: Zak Stein on Ending Nihilistic Design Jim talks with Zak Stein about the Consilience Project's article "Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design." They discuss how technologies actualize & encode values, 2nd- & 3rd-order effects of technologies, the "invisible hand" approach to ...
07.22.2022 Currents 066: Matthew Pirkowski on Emergence in Possibility Space Jim continues his discussion with Matthew Pirkowski on ideas of emergence and how they can be applied to today's meta-crisis. They discuss the meaning of emergence, treating potential as ontologically real, exaptation & meta-adaptation, path dependency in the history of ...
07.18.2022 EP 161 Greg Thomas on Untangling the Gordian Knot of Race Jim talks with Greg Thomas about American democracy & the problems created by racial essentialism & racialization. They discuss the Jazz Leadership Project, jazz as metaphor, the connection between racism & the concept of race, the slave trade's role in ...
07.07.2022 EP 160 Curtis Yarvin on Monarchy in the U.S.A. Jim talks with Curtis Yarvin about his proposal to replace our current government with a monarchy, part of an ongoing exploration of problems with and alternatives to democracy. They discuss a regime-change thought experiment beginning with liquid democracy, the goals ...
07.06.2022 EP 159 Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality Jim talks with Bobby Azarian about the ideas in his new book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, which Jim calls "the most Jim Rutt Show-ish book ever." They discuss ...
06.30.2022 Currents 065: Alexander Bard on Protopian Narratology Jim talks with Alexander Bard, continuing a series of encounters between GameB and the Dark Renaissance movement. They discuss the Grand Narrative Trilogy Bard has been writing with Jan Söderqvist, the kinds of stories we tell about ourselves, why Hiroshima ...
06.16.2022 Who Are You EP 01: Seth Jordan on Social Threefolding This is the first, experimental episode of Who Are You, a subseries of the Jim Rutt Show in which Jim has an unplanned conversation with a mystery guest nominated and elected by listeners. In this episode he meets Seth Jordan, ...
06.13.2022 Currents 064: Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel on Art x AI Jim talks with Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel about the intersection of AI and art. They discuss DALL-E & Midjourney, whether conscious agency is necessary for art, artifice vs discernment, Jung's synchronicity, AI art as dreaming, discernment & consecration, the ...
06.09.2022 EP 158 Remzi Bajrami on Flow Currency Jim talks to Remzi Bajrami about the ideas in his book Common Planet: A New Game of Life. They discuss what GameB means to him, three classes of players, whether property or profit is the engine of GameA, the source ...
06.06.2022 Currents 063: Jessica Flack on nth-Order Effects of the Russia-Ukraine War Jim talks with Jessica Flack about nth-order effects of the war in Ukraine. They discuss the meaning of second- and nth-order effects, black swans, Gaussian vs fat-tailed distribution models of extreme social events, the factoring in Ukraine's wheat & Russia's ...
05.16.2022 EP 157 Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter Jim talks to Terrence Deacon about the ideas in his new book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. They discuss the story of zero, integrating absence into physical theories, systems that generate entropy to stave off entropy, the history ...
05.05.2022 EP 156 James Poulos on Remaining Human Jim talks with James Poulos about the ideas in his new book Human Forever: The Spiritual Politics of Digital War. They discuss his decision to publish the book on the blockchain, going beginner's-mind on media & communications theory, the meaning ...
05.02.2022 Currents 062: Stephanie Lepp Interviews Jim Rutt on Musk and Moderation In this episode, Jim Rutt is a guest on his own show! He's interviewed by Stephanie Lepp about the ideas in his Quillette essay "Musk and Moderation." They discuss where things stand with Musk's recent purchase of Twitter, Jim's 41-year ...
04.18.2022 EP 155 Iain McGilchrist Part 2: The Matter With Things Jim has a second talk with Iain McGilchrist about the ideas in his book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. They discuss whether the continuity of time matters on the human scale, ...
04.11.2022 Currents 061: Nora Bateson on a Return to Earnestness Jim talks with Nora Bateson about ecologies of communication and the value of earnestness. They discuss simple irony, dramatic irony, post-irony, & meta-irony; irony & the ecology of communication, the mistake of pitting earnestness directly against irony, questioning forms of ...
04.04.2022 EP 154 Iain McGilchrist on The Matter With Things Jim talks with Iain McGilchrist about his new book, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. They discuss issues created by having one word for "know," the separation, asymmetry, & function of brain ...
03.28.2022 Currents 060: Panos Siozos on Online Education Jim talks with Panos Siozos, CEO and co-founder of LearnWorlds, a platform for online education, about alternative routes in education delivery. They discuss how Panos transitioned from science to entrepreneurship, why adult lifetime learning is important right now, an increasing ...
03.24.2022 Currents 059: Samo Burja on RU->UKR 23-MAR-2022 Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks again with Samo Burja about the state of the Russian advance one month in. They discuss Putin's maximum acceptable atrocity level, the complex relationship between public opinion and ...
03.22.2022 EP 153 Forrest Landry on Small Group Method Jim talks with Forrest Landry about his Small Group Method and the obstacles to scaling it up. They discuss why studying group processes is important, the difficulty of doing new things with old structures, 3 classes of decision-making structures (consensus, ...
03.21.2022 Currents 058: John Robb on Russia-Ukraine Outcomes Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks again with John Robb, this time about the likelihood of a settlement. They discuss the pressures currently pushing both sides against negotiating, why Russia is opposed to Ukraine ...
03.16.2022 Currents 057: Timothy Clancy on Russia’s Mid-Game Continuing his series of expert interviews on the Russia-Ukraine War, Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about forecasting the conflict through mid-May. They discuss five likely mid-game scenarios, Ukraine as a Go board, how urban combat has changed in the 21st ...
03.09.2022 Currents 056: Julyan Davey on Weaving a Non-Dual Civilization Jim has a talk with Julyan Davey inspired by Julyan's essay series "Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation." They discuss the "sublimewe" modality as a means of shifting into a GameB mindset, incorporating the intersubjective world into our models, interweaving inner & ...
03.04.2022 Currents 055: Paul Goble on Putin’s Strategic Mistakes Continuing his series of expert interviews on the unfolding situation in Ukraine, Jim talks with Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Eurasia. They discuss Putin's view of Russia as neglected & ignored, Russians' difficulty making ...
03.01.2022 Currents 054: Samo Burja on the Russia-Ukraine War Jim has a timely talk with Samo Burja about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it might mean moving forward. They discuss the consequences of a (likely) Russian victory, Russia's bet on new arctic ports & liquid natural gas, ...
02.28.2022 Currents 053: Matthew Pirkowski on Grammars of Emergence Jim talks with Matthew Pirkowski about new frameworks in the study of emergence. They discuss the concept's roots in the work of J.S. Mill, 19th-century tensions between reductionism & vitalism, Terrence Deacon's ententional properties, ententionality as a result of constraints, ...
02.25.2022 Currents 052: John Robb on War in Ukraine Jim has a forward-looking talk with recurring guest John Robb about the meaning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They discuss the likelihood that the event is a major historical hinge, Russia & China's different rule set, costs & benefits of ...
02.24.2022 Currents 051: Douglas Rushkoff on the Once and Future Internet Jim talks with Douglas Rushkoff about where the internet came from, where it might go, & how to move from dystopian despair to productive engagement. Loosely following the syllabus for (Re-)Designing the Internet, a course Douglas co-teaches at CUNY with ...
02.21.2022 Currents 050: Greg Lukianoff on Free Speech Jim talks with Greg Lukianoff, president & CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind. They discuss FIRE's mission of non-partisan free speech advocacy, recent high-profile ...
02.07.2022 EP 152 Gary Bengier on Hard-Science Futures Jim talks with Gary Bengier about his science fiction novel Unfettered Journey, depicting a hard-science view of a possible world 140 or so years in the future. They discuss the need for sci-fi that addresses real problems & that is ...
02.04.2022 Currents 049: Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder on Doomer Optimism Jim talks with Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder about the growing movement of Doomer Optimism. They discuss Ashley's coinage of the term, doomer optimism as an open-source structure of feeling, avoiding pathologies of despair & naive optimism, balancing philosophy with ...
01.31.2022 EP 151 Daniel Mezick on Ritual and Hierarchy Jim talks with Daniel Mezick about two books on leadership & social coherence, Michael Suk-Young Chwe's Rational Ritual and Christopher Boehm's Hierarchy in the Forest. They discuss ritual as a mechanism for large-scale coordination, mimicry in beer choice and Super ...
12.27.2021 Currents 048: Welf von Hören on Potential Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Welf von Hören, co-founder of the recently beta-launched Potential app. (Listeners who download the app can use the invitation code "jimruttshow".) They discuss Potential's goal of upgrading the human capacity for omni-considerate choices, the ...
12.20.2021 EP 150 Jeremy Lent on the Web of Meaning Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Jeremy Lent about his latest book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. They discuss the dominant worldview in today's advanced economies, its lack of ...
12.15.2021 Currents 047: Samuel Scarpino on the Epidemiology of Covid-19 Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Samuel Scarpino on Covid-19 epidemiology and disease surveillance. They discuss some of the biggest surprises in Covid research since its beginning, the importance of understanding the evolutionary trajectory of the virus, the oscillation pattern ...
12.13.2021 EP 149 Joshua Vial on Enspiral Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Joshua Vial, co-founder of the multifaceted social-impact support network Enspiral. They discuss Enspiral's origin story, its organizational structure, tradeoffs between exploration & exploitation, coherent pluralism, how to do a company without bosses, keeping product ...
11.29.2021 Currents 046: Henry Elkus & Sam Feinburg on Solving Societal Problems Jim talks with Henry Elkus and Sam Feinburg, founders of the global problem solving organization Helena. They discuss how Helena identifies society's big problems, the group's origin story, how they attracted a large membership of people who are first-class in ...
11.22.2021 EP148 Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing Jim has a wide-ranging talk with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio about his latest book, Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. They discuss the importance of separating intelligence from the nervous system, feeling as the inaugural event of consciousness, distinguishing consciousness from ...
11.15.2021 EP147 John Vervaeke Part 5: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis John Vervaeke joins Jim for the final episode of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss relevance's lack of essence, sacredness as inexhaustibility, separating cognitive indispensability from ...
11.04.2021 Currents 045: Dorian Abbot on Protecting Academic Freedom Jim has a timely discussion with geophysicist Dorian Abbot, whose public lecture was recently canceled by MIT—Jim's alma mater—due to Dorian's views on affirmative action. They discuss the (unrelated) scientific content of the canceled lecture, Abbot's & Ivan Marinovic's proposed ...
11.01.2021 EP146 John Vervaeke Part 4: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis John Vervaeke joins Jim for the fourth of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss Nietzsche as a prophet of the meaning crisis, the politicization of the ...
10.25.2021 EP145 John Vervaeke Part 3: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis John Vervaeke joins Jim for the third of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss altered states of consciousness, phenomenology as clue to functionality, fluency, weakening egocentrism, ...
10.18.2021 EP144 John Vervaeke Part 2: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis John Vervaeke joins Jim for the second of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke’s popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. They discuss virtue & virtuosity, Plato's man-monster-lion model, hyperbolic discounting, agent & arena, Plato's ...
10.11.2021 EP143 John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis John Vervaeke joins Jim for the first of a five-part series examining the ideas put forward in Vervaeke's popular YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. In this episode they focus on defining core concepts, including meaning, non-reductive science, symptoms ...
10.07.2021 Currents 044: Zak Stein on Propaganda and the Information War Zak Stein & Jim have a wide-ranging talk inspired by two recent Consilience Project essays on the information war & propaganda. They discuss the culture wars as a case of mutually assured destruction, distinguishing education from propaganda, developing widespread resistance ...
09.30.2021 Currents 043: Lene Rachel Andersen on Bildung Lene Rachel Andersen & Jim have a wide-ranging talk about the meaning of Bildung & the growing Bildung movement, inspired by last week's Global Bildung Festival. They discuss easily transferable "horizontal" knowledge vs. emotional, social, & bodily development, the need ...

Older episodes

The Jim Rutt Show

What's The Jim Rutt Show about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Jim Rutt Show episodes:

EP 165 Lene Rachel Andersen Part 1: Libertism

Currents 068: Jonathan Rowson on the Chess Drama

EP 164 John Markoff on the Many Lives of Stewart Brand

EP 163 Benedict Beckeld on Western Self-Contempt

EP 162 Max Borders on Decentralism

Currents 067: Zak Stein on Ending Nihilistic Design

Currents 066: Matthew Pirkowski on Emergence in Possibility Space

EP 161 Greg Thomas on Untangling the Gordian Knot of Race

EP 160 Curtis Yarvin on Monarchy in the U.S.A.

EP 159 Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality

Currents 065: Alexander Bard on Protopian Narratology

Who Are You EP 01: Seth Jordan on Social Threefolding

Currents 064: Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel on Art x AI

EP 158 Remzi Bajrami on Flow Currency

Currents 063: Jessica Flack on nth-Order Effects of the Russia-Ukraine War

EP 157 Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter

EP 156 James Poulos on Remaining Human

Currents 062: Stephanie Lepp Interviews Jim Rutt on Musk and Moderation

EP 155 Iain McGilchrist Part 2: The Matter With Things

Currents 061: Nora Bateson on a Return to Earnestness

EP 154 Iain McGilchrist on The Matter With Things

Currents 060: Panos Siozos on Online Education

Currents 059: Samo Burja on RU->UKR 23-MAR-2022

EP 153 Forrest Landry on Small Group Method

Currents 058: John Robb on Russia-Ukraine Outcomes

Currents 057: Timothy Clancy on Russia’s Mid-Game

Currents 056: Julyan Davey on Weaving a Non-Dual Civilization

Currents 055: Paul Goble on Putin’s Strategic Mistakes

Currents 054: Samo Burja on the Russia-Ukraine War

Currents 053: Matthew Pirkowski on Grammars of Emergence

Currents 052: John Robb on War in Ukraine

Currents 051: Douglas Rushkoff on the Once and Future Internet

Currents 050: Greg Lukianoff on Free Speech

EP 152 Gary Bengier on Hard-Science Futures

Currents 049: Ashley Colby & Jason Snyder on Doomer Optimism

EP 151 Daniel Mezick on Ritual and Hierarchy

Currents 048: Welf von Hören on Potential

EP 150 Jeremy Lent on the Web of Meaning

Currents 047: Samuel Scarpino on the Epidemiology of Covid-19

EP 149 Joshua Vial on Enspiral

Currents 046: Henry Elkus & Sam Feinburg on Solving Societal Problems

EP148 Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing

EP147 John Vervaeke Part 5: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

Currents 045: Dorian Abbot on Protecting Academic Freedom

EP146 John Vervaeke Part 4: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

EP145 John Vervaeke Part 3: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

EP144 John Vervaeke Part 2: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

EP143 John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

Currents 044: Zak Stein on Propaganda and the Information War

Currents 043: Lene Rachel Andersen on Bildung