Episodes
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What is the future of voice? Where does AI fit in? Listen on!
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My guest this week is Harry Yeff, aka Reeps100.
Harry Yeff, aka Reeps100, is a London-born neurodivergent artist and technologist specializing in voice, AI, and tech-based performance art. Yeff emerged from a working-class background, dedicating his life to art and concept. He has been visualizing the voice for 15 years and is globally celebrated as a leader in a new wave of voice technology-focused experimentation despite a very nontraditional pathway into fine art and new media. He continues to build on his skillset by utilizing an almost inhuman vocal range to drive his works. Yeff rose to fame in the early 2010s as a beatboxer. His inhuman-natured vocal ability opened up a slew of voice, technology and academic collaborations, leading him to amass a global following, rendering over 100 million views online. Notable academic partnerships include three separate Harvard residencies, the last of which was followed quickly by a collaboration with Leipzig Opera House in Germany, where Yeff produced and directed the world's first-ever AI ballet.
What I so appreciate about Harry's practice is how he’s asking us to return to perhaps our most basic technology: our voices. Oftentimes when folks invoke the voice it’s in service of language or meaning. What Harry highlights is the voice itself—its raw capabilities, how precious each individual voice is. Every time I speak to Harry, I’m left with a renewed excitement for the possibilities of voice—and I’m sure you’ll feel the same.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Transitioning off of fossil fuels is critical for our survival, but what if the solutions we're racing to develop (solar, wind, etc.) aren't actually sustainable? What happens if we don't have enough minerals to service the energy demand our current projections say we'll need to?
My guest today is Simon Michaux, and his proposal is that we ditch the 'Green Transition' in favor of the 'Purple Transition.'
Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 72% off 2-year plans).Simon Michaux is Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) in KTR, the Circular Economy Solutions Unit. He holds a Bachelors in Applied Sciences in Physics and Geology and a Phd in Mining Engineering from JKMRC at the University of Queensland.
He has 18 years of experience in the Australian mining industry in research and development, 12 months at Ausenco in the private sector, 3 years in Belgium at the University of Liege researching Circular Economy and industrial recycling. Michaux worked in Minerals Intelligence in the MTR unit at GTK before joining the KTR.
Simon’s long-term objectives include the development and transformation of the Circular Economy into a more practical system for the industrial ecosystem to navigate the twin challenges of the scarcity of technology minerals and the transitioning away from fossil fuels.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Missing episodes?
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What does the election of Donald Trump mean for America and the world? And what can we do about it?
This is not the post-election episode I’d hoped to do. I imagined I’d be doing an episode where I talked through the progressive ideals that didn’t make their way into the Harris campaign, and strategies + tactics we could use to hold the Harris administration accountable to them. Alas.
There are so many takes and so much finger-pointing; I’m not here to add to any of that. I’m here to reflect on what the election might mean for near- and longer-term futures, and where we go from here. How do we re-orient, what actions do we need to take to minimize harm and promote mutual aid?
Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 72% off 2-year plans).
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
How can humans deepen our relationship(s) with nature without anthropomorphizing or flattening it? Seeing the natural world in all its messiness, contradictions, & wonder.
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guest this week is Bradley Rydholm.
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Bradley Rydholm is an outdoor educator with a passion for exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world. He holds a master's degree in Outdoor Education Leadership where he combined traditional elements of the outdoor field with ecopsychology. He brings this focus on the relationship with nature to his education work in a variety of outdoor excursions and events.
He is the creator of Nature Is Not Metal, a platform dedicated to blurring the boundaries between nature and culture, urban and wild, body and mind, human and non-human. The platform seeks to use social media to creatively promote these ideas. He also writes the Green Night of the Soul Substack.
In the outdoors or on the internet, Bradley aims to inspire a deep appreciation and even a sense of enchantment with our weird and wild world.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Propaganda and the game of influence have evolved with the rise of social media. Who's winning that game—and who is losing?
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guest this week is Renée DiResta.
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Humans have long been a rumor-prone species, but how rumors can spread—and how influencers can become propagandists, knowingly or not—is a distinctly contemporary phenomenon. And understanding how and why it happens is vital for making sense of reality, especially in a heated election season that has already been marked by some wild conspiracy theories.
Renée DiResta’s work examines rumors and propaganda in the digital age. She has analyzed geopolitical campaigns created by foreign powers such as Russia, China, and Iran; voting‑related rumors that led to the January 6 insurrection; and health misinformation and conspiracy theories pushed by domestic influencers. She is a contributor at The Atlantic. Her bylined writing has appeared in Wired, Foreign Affairs, Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Yale Review, The Guardian, POLITICO, Slate, and Noema, as well as many academic journals.
DiResta was the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching, and policy engagement for the study of abuse in information technologies. She has been a Presidential Leadership Scholar (a program run by the Presidents Bush, Clinton, and the LBJ Foundations); named an Emerson Fellow, a Truman National Security Project fellow, Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, a Harvard Berkman-Klein affiliate, and a Council on Foreign Relations term member.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Imagine a world without police. Would we be safe?
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guest this week is Professor Philip V. McHarris.
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Philip V. McHarris is an assistant professor in the Frederick Douglass Institute and Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. McHarris was a presidential postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University in the Department of African American Studies and the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. He earned his PhD in sociology and African American studies at Yale University. He was named one of the Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2020. McHarris has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and PBS and in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and more.
Imagine a world without police.
Not hypothetically—take a moment and imagine that world. What are your first impressions? Lawless cities plunged into chaos? Crime-ridden dystopias? Something something Mad Max? My guest today argues that a world without police is actually a utopia, and has the receipts to prove it.
If you’re skeptical, then I’m excited for you to listen to this conversation with Professor Philip McHarris, author of the recent book Beyond Policing. It’s an astounding read—sprint, don’t walk, to pick up your copy.
Phil believes this world is possible, and makes a persuasive argument for why—and how.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
How close are brain-computer interfaces? And how big of a deal is AI, really?
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guest this week is Taryn Southern.
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Taryn Southern is an award-winning storyteller and creative technologist exploring the intersection of emerging tech and human potential. Her groundbreaking creative experiments blend innovation and art, offering insights into how we can all engage technology to lead more creative, joyful, healthy and productive lives.
A digital media pioneer, Taryn’s career began at the forefront of the online content revolution. In 2007, she hosted and produced a TV series documenting her travels to meet MySpace friends and uploaded her first viral video to YouTube. Over the next decade, she created over 1500 videos garnering more than 1 billion views.
In 2017, Taryn began experimenting with emerging technologies to push the boundaries of her creative work. She composed the world’s first AI album, which landed on the Top 100 US Radio Charts and received widespread media attention. She then combined VR, blockchain, AI and spatial computing to create an award-winning Google VR series, earning her the AT&T Film Award. Her directorial debut, I AM HUMAN, a documentary on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, won numerous awards, and is now available on Apple and Amazon.
Since 2021, Taryn has served as Chief Storyteller at a leading implantable neurotechnology company, where she launched the world’s first BCI museum and oversaw communications strategy for two successful funding rounds totaling over $230M. An advocate of women in science and tech, she has also angel invested in future-forward companies such as Oura, Etched, Extend Fertility, Vessel Health, and Forever Labs.
Prior to her work in emerging tech, Taryn’s creative work spanned both traditional and new media. She sold a musical comedy pilot to MTV when she was 23 years old, co-hosted Discovery Channel’s #1 late night show, guest-starred on primetime network TV shows, and created digital series for Conde Naste, Airbnb, The Today Show, Snapchat, and Maker Studios. She was an early advisor to YouTube, Google VR and Snapchat product teams, and consulted for companies like Conde Nast and Marriott on digital content strategy and narrative design.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
What if our interpersonal relationships and the polycrisis have a lot more to do with each other than we might initially think?
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guest this week is Nora Bateson.
Pick up your copy of Nora's latest book, Combining, here.
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Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, and international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. She is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.
She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson.
Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity.
In her latest second book Combining, Nora invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity.
She was the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2019.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signals in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guest this week is Al Hassan Elwan.
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Al Hassan Elwan is an interdisciplinary designer, brand consultant and creative director, born in Cairo, Egypt. They are now based in Los Angeles, where they completed a postgraduate degree in architecture with a focus on media studies from SCI-Arc in 2022.
Al is the founder of POSTPOSTPOST™, a brand that produces films, publications, and fashion on the edges of the cultural vanguard while simultaneously building an art movement. POSTPOSTPOST™ has garnered a following on Instagram by posting contemporary cultural commentary, niche content, and avant-garde theory in the format of memes. Al is the instigator and co-editor of POSTPOSTPOST™'s inaugural publication, POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a New Avant-garde, which features contributions from over 30 artists, writers, and academics, including Shumon Basar, Jack Self, Carly Busta, and Ana Viktoria Dzinic. POSTPOSTPOST™ has been featured in various publications such as Dazed, FlashArt, Frieze Seoul, Novembre, DAMN Magazine, and others. Al is also the writer and director of POSTPOSTPOST™’s launch film, produced by Liam Young - which is now published on DIS [dis.art]. Their theoretical work has been published in RealReview and DoNotResearch, among others. They are also a part-time lecturer at MSCHF.
Besides their POSTPOSTPOST™ work, Al is the co-founder and Creative Director of the brand strategy and design firm, pew. design bureau, which is based in Cairo, Dubai and Los Angeles. pew. has worked with notable clients including Google, YouTube, Vice, Unilever, and UN Women, and their work has been featured in Entrepreneur, World Brand Design Society, LA Weekly, the Brandberries, Cairoscene, and others.
I first met Al when their fever dream of a new avant-garde, POSTPOSTPOST™, was just taking shape. It immediately struck a chord with me. A decade ago I was drawn in by metamodernism, the proposed structure of feeling that emerged in the wake of postmodernism. A lot of people have a lot of feelings about metamodernism, and this isn’t the place where I’m going to get into it—though I am planning some pieces on Reality Studies, so be sure to subscribe over there.
I bring it up because when I encountered metamodernism, it had an electricity to it that felt true, capturing something in the zeitgeist that I hadn’t seen named quite so well prior. And this is exactly how I felt when I encountered POSTPOSTPOST™ in 2022. Of course, the 2020s are many worlds away from the 2010s, with new forms of digital culture and sociality. Ideas can go from fringe to center in an eyeblink—looking at you, Brat Summer and very demure. And speaking for myself, there’s this paradoxical feeling I get when I navigate platforms whose algorithms prioritize de-nuanced, hard-line certainty—all the while I feel increasingly disoriented and uncertain.
POSTPOSTPOST™ consistently manages to distill that weird feeling. Al delights in ambiguity, even as they weigh into murky and fraught topics. I won’t burden you with a deep media theory argument, but simply say that the work feels important to me. In this conversation, which I’m honored is something of an admin reveal for the account, we get into a full range of stuff, from their background growing up in Egypt, their experience in architecture, memes (of course), and much more.
As this show is finding new audiences, some of the folks who are most concerned about ecological overshoot, climate change, and biodiversity loss have expressed confusion about why I also emphasize digital culture on the channel. My answer is simple: how we socialize and share information with each other impacts pretty much everything else—and digital culture plays an outsized role in determining those norms. Folks who understand the emerging shapes of digital culture are critical in helping the rest of us understand the realities we inhabit. And Al is one such critical interlocutor.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signals in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
My guests this week are Gerardo Ceballos & Paul R. Ehrlich
Gerardo Ceballos, one of the world’s leading ecologists, is a professor at the Institute of Ecology at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He has established more than twenty protected areas in Mexico and is the author or coauthor of more than 55 books. Ehrlich and Ceballos are coauthors of The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals.
Paul R. Ehrlich is the emeritus Bing Professor of Population Studies in the Department of Biology and the president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. He is the author of The Population Bomb and Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect.
I don’t even know where to begin with this conversation. On the one hand, I’m still a little dumbfounded that I had the opportunity to have a conversation with two of the world’s leading conservation scientists, whose contributions not only to their respective fields but to the planet are historically significant.
On the other hand, this is one of the most devastating conversations I’ve had on the show, rivaled only by my chat with William Rees, which I’d say is thematically linked. The inciting incident for the conversation is the publication of their incredible new book, Before They Vanish, which they co-authored with Rodolfo Dirzo, who wasn’t able to also join the call because he’s out in the field. As you might gather from the title, the book is part-blaring siren, part-love letter. In in, the authors highlight how precious life on Earth really is, detailing not only the sheer variety of flora and fauna we are blessed to share the planet with, but how entangled they all are within ecosystems we humans have done so little to understand, and therefore have allowed ourselves to push to the brink of extinction.
Before I go any further, I want to say what I always say in episodes like this: go buy the book. These conversations are invitations to the subject matter, and I do hope they’re illuminating, but the book is where you’ll have the necessary time and mental space to fully grapple with the ideas.
Anyway, however bad you imagine the present extinction crisis is, which some have called the sixth mass extinction, this book basically argues it’s worse even than that. That stems from several factors, including the lack of historical data, the amount of information we still don’t have about various ecosystems, and the way we tend to measure extinctions—at the species level rather than at the level of discrete populations. The book also outlines the drivers of the extinction crisis and steps that we could take individually and collectively to mitigate the harms of modern industrial society, and advocate for protections that will begin to heal the planet.
Before people get up in my comments: I’m well aware of how individual responsibility has been weaponized by fossil fuel companies, and I too am wary putting the onus on individuals. That said, through their careers, these three authors have shown how much individuals can actually do. And we’re in the all hands-on-deck, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink moment to protect biodiversity. We should want to protect biodiversity because life is sacred, but even if that doesn’t land, as Ehrlich says in the interview, if we destroy biodiversity, we humans likely won’t survive either.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 72% off 2-year plans).
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signal in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 72% off 2-year plans).
My guest this week is Nina Jankowicz.
Nina Jankowicz, the co-founder and CEO of The American Sunlight Project, is an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization, one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, and the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War (2020), which The New Yorker called “a persuasive new book on disinformation as a geopolitical strategy,” and How to Be A Woman Online (2022), an examination of online abuse and disinformation and tips for fighting back, which Publishers Weekly named “essential.” Jankowicz has advised governments, international organizations, and tech companies, and testified before the US Congress, UK Parliament, and European Parliament.
In 2022, Jankowicz was appointed to lead the Disinformation Governance Board, an intra-agency best practices and coordination entity at the Department of Homeland Security; she resigned the position after a sustained disinformation campaign caused the Biden Administration to abandon the project. From 2017-2022, Jankowicz has held fellowships at the Wilson Center, where she led accessible, actionable research about the effects of disinformation on women and freedom of expression around the world. She advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship in 2016-17. Early in her career, she managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute.
Nina has lived a fascinating life, which is not to say that it’s always been easy. In many ways she has lived out the very things that she’s spent her career researching and working to address.
I first encountered Nina’s work in How to Lose the Information War, which really clarified my understanding of how Russian influence operations work. This was in 2020, when concern about disinformation and its impacts had reached all-time highs, especially with regard to the rise of conspiracy theories like QAnon, antivax communities, and more. How to Lose the Information War was a book that helped me see how these seemingly convoluted outcomes were grounded in basic, repeatable strategies (not just by Russians per se, but by anyone seeking to manipulate the information sphere at scale).
In recognition of her work and scholarship, Nina was tapped to lead the Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security in 2022. But her tenure was short-lived—in no small part because of the very influence operations and toxified media environment that she had been working to illuminate and address. We talk about this more in-depth in the episode.
Already in 2022 talk of disinformation and misinformation didn’t have the fangs that it had during the Trump years. In some ways that speaks to half of the American populace feeling like they could ramp down from the state of hypervigilance they’d maintained during the preceding years. But just because it wasn’t as hot of a topic of conversation anymore didn’t mean that bad actors weren’t still endeavoring to interfere with the information environment. If anything, the lack of a magnifying glass probably made for ideal conditions to build out new operations and social communities.
Which is why Nina’s latest effort, The American Sunlight Project feels like such an important organization at this moment. Yes, there are complicated questions about what means we use to determine if something is true, but at bare minimum we need an information space predicated on good-faith attempts to reach consensus, even if through debate. To do that, we need to understand the media environment we’re in and the strategies we need to develop to preserve our ability to communicate. And Nina is one of the key figures leading us in that direction.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signal in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 72% off 2-year plans).
My guest this week is Michael Mezzatesta.
To say the economy is complex is an understatement. It’s among the most complex systems humanity has ever concocted, full of high-level math and specialized theory that makes it impenetrable to outsiders. Factor in the layers of financial apparatus and we’re talking about something that the average person is right to assume is totally beyond their grasp.
And yet, it’s absolutely vital that the public understands the basics of what’s going on and how we can participate in making change. This is what makes economics communicators so essential, and why I’m thrilled to share this conversation with Michael Mezzatesta. Over the past few years, he’s used his background as an economist to make economics and finance topics accessible to the public, and not just any economics topics, but specifically those related to growth and climate change. Over 99% of scientists agree that climate change is human-caused—and that the next few years will be critical in mitigating the effects of global heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
To take meaningful action, humanity will necessarily need to try a range of actions, and one critical lever is the economy. How might democratic societies induce systems change toward deemphasizing growth and prioritizing justice and wellbeing?
Yes, the scale of the problem is immense, but there are ideas, theories, and tactics that many of us have never considered or grasped in any depth. I believe that encountering these ideas, and being shown that we can understand them, is a critical first step toward generating action. This is why I view Michael’s work as so important: it builds baseline awareness and understanding, and invites solidarity and the belief that change is not only possible, but maybe even a lot closer to realizing than we’d ever imagine.
BIOMichael Mezzatesta is an economist and educator using social media to spread ideas for a better future. His videos analyze sustainability through the lenses of economics, finance, and culture. By highlighting intersectional issues and pushing for systemic solutions, Michael encourages people to think differently about climate change – and to imagine better futures. Previously, Michael got an economics degree from Stanford and spent a few years working as a consultant at McKinsey & Company before jumping into growth & marketing work at climate/technology startups in Los Angeles. He’s currently involved in a few organizations – including Earth4All, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and the Post Growth Institute – that advocate for economic justice and systems change.
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Or recommend it to a friend who might like it. All of it help the podcast grow.
Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lia Halloran & Kip Thorne, Cherie Hu, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, and more.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds signal in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 72% off 2-year plans).
My guest this week is porn historian Noelle Perdue.
Porn. I’ve noticed it referenced in the news and on social media a lot more lately because many are concerned that it’s having harmful addictive effects on us—especially on adolescents and young men. While I do think it’s important to take these concerns seriously, I think sometimes these arguments are not being made in good faith, and when they are, they’re directed at symptoms, not underlying causes.
What I’m getting at is this. What if porn is not the problem, but Western society’s post-Puritanical relationship to it? (or not so post puritanical) And what are the byproducts of a culture that not only demonizes pornography, but implicitly advocates for repressing desire, and wraps up these fears into obscenity law that harms queer, trans, nonbinary folks, and pretty much anyone else who doesn’t fit neatly within the bounds of heternormativity?
Spoiler alert: it’s not good!
This is why it felt so important to invite Noelle onto Urgent Futures. She is someone who approaches this subject with a high degree of rigor, but also an artist’s touch, translating complex ideas in accessible and sometimes even comedic ways. In the episode you’ll hear how I discovered her work through an experimental AI art project she posted about on TikTok in 2021. I even see this approach at work in her more recent project, Candy Lore, a venue for serious reviews of candy. Even though it’s not about porn at all, it gives a sense of how she’s able to take a subject that’s often dismissed as frivolous, despite being a major part of our culture, and treat it with care without losing its essential play and silliness.
Porn, sex, eroticism, and intimacy are incredibly complex, interrelated systems. Trying to address them with oversimplified mechanistic approaches represents a misunderstanding of their complexity. We need to be able to talk about these subjects openly, and create a culture and political backdrop in which it doesn’t imperil folks to talk about it honestly. It seems obvious to me that working in that direction would do more to curb the harmful effects currently being attributed to porn and the porn industry than attacking it. But if you’re unconvinced, I have one of the world’s leading experts on the subject to explain it better than I ever could.
BIO:Noelle Perdue is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian with nearly ten years of experience working platform-side for multiple mainstream and independent adult companies. Having written everything from Food Network porn parodies to legally binding terms and conditions, much of her current work explores obscenity law and how pornography’s history can influence our digital and political futures. Noelle’s writing work has been published on Wired, Washington Post, Pornhub, Slate, Brazzers, Input, etc, she’s also been featured as an industry expert on multiple programs including the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and on Netflix's 2023 documentary Money Shot.
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Or recommend it to a friend who might like it. All of it help the podcast grow.
Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
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My guest this week is William E. Rees.
There’s this quote attributed to Charles Kettering that goes “A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.” When surveying the immensity of the interdependent crises we face: climate change, soil desertification, biodiversity loss, pollution, microplastics, war, and so on, simply stating the problem can feel impossible. But, as I’ve learned from Bill, at the highest level, it’s extremely straightforward (though I don’t mean to confuse that with it being easy to solve!). It’s something called ecological overshoot.
Overshoot occurs when the demands on an ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity. Suffice to say that human beings are in extreme overshoot, and pushing further every single year. According to the Ecological Footprint Analysis, and I’m quoting from one of Bill’s papers here, “we would need the bio-capacity equivalent of three additional Earth-like planets to supply the demands of just the present population sustainably.” And the population continues to grow on this one precious planet. The neoliberal demand for “infinite growth” is literally unsustainable.
All the problems listed above, along with the myriad others in the polycrisis, stem back to the simple fact that humanity has created systems and incentives that are causing us to use up more than the Earth can regenerate, ultimately destroying those systems entirely and decreasing the chances that the the planet can sustain our species (as well as the many the other Earthlings who have no say in the matter). Of course, responding to this problem is where the complexity kicks in. Different folks approach this problem differently. Bill advocates for reducing the human population from today’s 8.2 billion to closer to 2 billion people. You can imagine this has led to no small degree of backlash and critique, with proponents of population control often vilified as neo-Malthusian, anti-human, eco-fascist, and racist.
Population control of course has a problematic history, and can easily turn into a racist, fascist, anti-human project. We should never forget that. But there’s another version based on collective action and wisdom: understanding that we are embedded within ecologies. Rather than continuing to believe we’re separated from them, we can work to realign ourselves with them, to bring systems back into balance and open up possibilities of healing and restoration.
In the West, we’ve been conditioned to blindly believe in narratives of onward-and-upward economic “progress,” which is why so many think of our current context as normal. It’s anything but. As Bill points out, these expectations are based on one of the most anomalous 200-ish year periods in the history of the world. Given the current pace of technoindustrial society, and the data we have about the state of the Earth, our species is driving itself toward extinction.
We like to believe that human ingenuity will step in to address any problem, but our understanding of what humans can accomplish is predicated on the one-time infusion of magic that is carbon energy. As we literally burn through that supply, with no actual substitute on the horizon—renewables are vital but they’re nowhere near meaningful replacements yet— that ingenuity will run up against the limits of increasing costs. If energy costs more, everything costs more. Meanwhile, the associated systems of Modernity have decreased our resilience in the name of efficiency—something we witnessed firsthand in the 2021-23 supply chain crisis. So yes, it’s of course possible that humanity will pull more tricks out of the hat, but the obstacles are increasing in scope and scale. Neoliberal economics isn’t equipped to handle this; the environment doesn’t even factor into the schema. To quote Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
It is in this context that Bill advocates for collectively working to humanely reduce the human population to closer to 2 billion people. Of course, this isn’t a solution without externalities. Some folks, famously Elon Musk, believe the inverse threat of population collapse is a bigger problem. And even those who don’t subscribe to that way of thinking might get uncomfortable at the conversation about population control because of historical efforts that were violent and anti-human. But if we’re as ingenious as we’ve claimed, I have to believe it’s possible to coordinate interventions that are humane and ultimately liberatory.
I find Bill’s arguments that we need to do this incredibly persuasive, but even for those who don’t agree, I think it’s critical that we at least confront the ideas—they ask us to take more nuanced, rigorous, and ecological approaches to crisis. One way or another, it’s imperative for our safety and wellbeing that we bring our species back into alignment with the ecologies in which we live. And Bill Rees is one of the world’s foremost experts in demonstrating why.
BIO:
William Rees is an ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. He researches global ecological trends with special interests in cities as vulnerable components of the human ecosystem and in psycho-cognitive barriers to societal change. Prof Rees is the originator and co-developer (with his graduate students) of ‘ecological footprint analysis’ (EFA). He has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed and popular articles on EFA and the above topics. A Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, Prof. Rees is also a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics, a founding Director of the One Earth Living Initiative and a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute. Internationally recognized, Prof Rees is a recipient of a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship and both the international Boulding Prize in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with Dr Mathis Wackernagel). He also received the 2015 Herman Daly award from the US Society for Ecological Economics and, in 2016, a Dean’s Medal of Distinction from UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science. Prof Rees was a full member of the Club of Rome from 2014 - 2019.
Support Reality Studies:
NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.
ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, I strongly recommend these.
Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).
MUD\WTR: Right now, get 43% off starter packs using this link and the code SUMMER. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)
Mission Farms CBD: Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff: I take one of their Marionberry Lemon gummies to end each day.
There’s a lot of junk CBD on the market. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows. Go to this link and sign up for emails to get 25% off your first order.
1Password: Listen, I know from personal experience that password managers don’t make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but I need to express 3 things: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.
NordVPN: Right now, get up to 74% off 2-year plans + 3 extra months using this link. Some people tell me that “VPN” brings to mind ideas of hackers and the dark web, but honestly VPNs are just an extremely easy way to stay much safer online. I’ve used NordVPN for the past four years, and appreciate what they offer, including Threat Protection against malware, 24/7 customer support, fast speeds, and more. One account can protect up to 6 devices (phone and computer), and they don’t track or share what you do online. Another benefit: you can always access the content/apps you have at home, wherever in the world you are.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
My guest this week is Günseli Yalcinkaya. An expert in youth and internet culture, London-based writer, researcher and critic Günseli Yalcinkaya is the features editor at Dazed Magazine and the host of Logged On, a podcast series that puts online trends under the microscope. She's written extensively about AI, VR and psychedelia, and as an artist, studies the relationship between ecology, magic and machine learning.
What’s an AI cryptid? What is reality shifting? How are dolls and the idea of cuteness evolving online, and what does this mean for the future of intimacy? What’s the next phase of conspiritualism? How are tropes and memes changing—and how are those changes shifting how we communicate with each other? If these questions appeal to you—or sound like they might once you understand what they’re referring to—you need to be paying attention to Günseli’s writing, editorial, and arts practice.
Please support this podcast by checking out:
- ZBiotics: https://zbiotics.com/?sca_ref=4926056.YlP8s92iYP (click the link or use code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off)- MUD\WTR: https://mudwtr.pxf.io/Urgent (click the link to reveal 43% off starter packs with code)- Mission Farms CBD: https://mission-farms-cbd.sjv.io/Urgent (25% off with email signup via link)- NordVPN: https://nordvpn.com/special/?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_term=&utm_content&utm_campaign=off15&utm_source=aff97058. (Get up to 69% off 2-year plans + a Saily eSIM data gift with that link) - 1Password: https://1password.partnerlinks.io/UrgentFutures (free trial at that link)
In the simplest terms, Günseli creates context for latent trends, stuff floating around in the zeitgeist that’s barely understood, or might not even have a name yet. And her interest in the weird, the occult, and psychedelia adds a surprising and distinct angle.
Forecasting any single trend or cultural phenomenon is difficult enough, but swimming in the rapids of digital culture and managing to return with meaningful syntheses is really special. This dot-connecting helps us all make sense of the accelerating rush of trends, memes, ideas, and emergent social phenomena. Understanding the edges of digital culture as it exists now—especially the weird stuff—helps us orient to coming shapes of reality. I’ve learned so much from her work online, so I invited her on Urgent Futures to dig into the questions and topics I mentioned earlier, as well as other key areas of research she’s pursuing in her arts practice. The result is a wide-ranging conversation that has a lot to teach us about internet culture and beyond. So please enjoy this conversation with Günseli Yalcinkaya.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
My guest this week is data journalist & professor Meredith Broussard.
The public discourse around AI is noisy. Depending on where you turn, it’s either about to save the world or destroy the world, grant you magical powers or take your job and leave you penniless. But AI is a very real thing happening in and to society. Rarely is the hype-doom binary helpful for understanding how it is and will be woven into our lives from a practical perspective—as well as the social, cultural, political, and economic issues it surfaces or amplifies.
So I was thrilled to chat with Meredith, who has been a guiding light in understanding what AI actually is here and now, as well as how to approach the technology ethically. She published Artificial Unintelligence in 2018—which in the dog years of tech bubbles is several lifetimes ago. In it, she proposed the notion of (and makes the case against) technochauvinism, the belief that technology is always the best or only solution to social problems. Technochauvinism is a powerful lens to understand the mistakes people make in developing AI, as well as in the narratives put forward by AI developers. It’s also helpful for understanding how race, gender, and ability bias in technology is perpetuated through AI—which is the focus of her most recent book, More Than a Glitch. These forms of systemic injustice and oppression that are amplified by algorithmic tools are not abstract, they have real world consequences for real people. The book is an absolute must-read—actually just got a new paperback release a few months ago, so make sure you go grab a copy.
Across both of these books, and the rest of her scholarly and public output, Meredith has an incredible gift for making complex technical topics related to AI and computing accessible without dumbing things down. However you feel about AI—and I know there are many mixed opinions—it’s clearly going to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future. As a non-technical person myself, I believe it’s vital to develop basic literacies and informed positions on AI, so that we’re able to meaningfully participate in advocating for prosocial uses and sensible regulations. And we get to these positions by learning from experts like Meredith Broussard.
Bio: Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of the book, More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2023), as well as the award-winning 2018 book Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good. She appears in the Emmy-nominated documentary “Coded Bias,” now streaming on Netflix. Her work has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute of Museum & Library Services, and the Tow Center at Columbia Journalism School. A former features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has also worked as a software developer at AT&T Bell Labs and the MIT Media Lab. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Vox, and other outlets.
📚 Grab your copy of More Than a Glitch here and Artificial Unintelligence here.
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Or recommend it to a friend who might like it. All of it help the podcast grow. Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
🎧 Audio versions of the podcast can be found Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, please subscribe!
Support Reality Studies:
NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.
Health & Wellness:
ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, I strongly recommend these.
Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).
MUD\WTR: Right now, get 43% off starter packs using this link and the code SUMMER. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)
Mission Farms CBD: Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff: I take one of their Marionberry Lemon gummies to end each day.
There’s a lot of junk CBD on the market. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows. Go to this link and sign up for emails to get 25% off your first order.
Digital Hygiene:
1Password: Listen, I know from personal experience that password managers don’t make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but I need to express 3 things: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.
NordVPN: Right now, get up to 69% off 2-year plans + a Saily eSIM data gift through this link. Some people tell me that “VPN” brings to mind ideas of hackers and the dark web, but honestly VPNs are just an extremely easy way to stay much safer online. I’ve used NordVPN for the past four years, and appreciate what they offer, including Threat Protection against malware, 24/7 customer support, fast speeds, and more. One account can protect up to 6 devices (phone and computer), and they don’t track or share what you do online. Another benefit: you can always access the content/apps you have at home, wherever in the world you are.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lia Halloran & Kip Thorne, Cherie Hu, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, and more.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
My guest this week is artist & science communicator Margaret Wertheim.
(If you're loving Reality Studies, please leave us ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ or a review right now—it does wonders helping us reach new listeners!)
Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and artist whose work focuses on relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. With degrees in math and physics, she is animated by a view that science is a field of conceptual enchantment and a socially embedded activity. Wertheim is the author of seven books, including Pythagoras’s Trousers, a History of Physics and Religion; The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet; and Physics on the Fringe, an exploration of ‘outsider science.’ Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Guardian, Cabinet, Aeon, and many others. She and her sister Christine Wertheim are co-founders of the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles-based practice devoted to “the aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.” Their Crochet Coral Reef project is the world’s largest participatory science+art endeavor, with over 25,000 participants in 50 cities and countries, that has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Helsinki Biennial, The Smithsonian (D.C.), Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Museum Frieder Burda (Germany), Schlossmuseum Linz (Austria), and elsewhere. Margaret’s Reef TED Talk has been viewed 1.6 million times. She has worked on all seven continents and stood on the South Pole.
Margaret is one of the most exciting, iconoclastic thinkers I have ever encountered. No bio or preamble is really going to do justice to the breadth of scholarship, art, education, and staggering hybridity that comprises her practice.
I first brushed with her mind asynchronously, through her book the Pearly Gates of Cyberspace. The book examines how a society’s relationship to and understanding of space will influence how it imagines itself—and, written in the late ‘90s, what that meant in the early days of the web. One look at the evolution of digital culture since soundly proves out her thesis. But more than that it’s a journey through art, science, math, history, and philosophy that only a truly interdisciplinary mind could imagine. Each realm of her expertise in itself would be impressive; from mathematics to physics to art, but it’s her ability to synthesize these across different modalities that separates her from the rest.
Grab your copy of Pearly Gates here!
Maybe the most obvious example of this intermixing is in the crochet coral reef project, which she co-founded with her sister Christine Wertheim. It’s simultaneously a large-scale participatory art project, a work of astounding environmental activism, and a fun, accessible way to teach the public about the basics of curved space—inviting participants to reconsider their ability to learn mathematical concepts. But this applies to so much of Margaret’s work—take her latest exploration into the history and concept of “dimensions.”
With the rise of the large deep learning models we see in contemporary generative AI, which rely on multidimensionality, it’s never been more important to understand this concept, and Margaret is without a doubt the thinker to take us there—not just because she’s an expansive enough mind to understand the concepts, but the generosity to frame them in an accessible way for the public to understand them.
A lot of people talk about the importance of making complex subjects accessible to the public, but Margaret walks the walk. And you get a taste of that in this conversation.
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Both things help the podcast grow. Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
🎧 Audio versions of the podcast can be found Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, please subscribe!
Support Reality Studies:
NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.
Health & Wellness:
ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, I strongly recommend these.
Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).
MUD\WTR: Right now, get 43% off starter packs using this link and the code SUMMER. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)
Mission Farms CBD: Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff: I take one of their Marionberry Lemon gummies to end each day.
There’s a lot of junk CBD on the market. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows. Go to this link and sign up for emails to get 25% off your first order.
Digital Hygiene:
1Password: Listen, I know from personal experience that password managers don’t make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but I need to express 3 things: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.
NordVPN: Right now, get up to 69% off 2-year plans + a Saily eSIM data gift through this link. Some people tell me that “VPN” brings to mind ideas of hackers and the dark web, but honestly VPNs are just an extremely easy way to stay much safer online. I’ve used NordVPN for the past four years, and appreciate what they offer, including Threat Protection against malware, 24/7 customer support, fast speeds, and more. One account can protect up to 6 devices (phone and computer), and they don’t track or share what you do online. Another benefit: you can always access the content/apps you have at home, wherever in the world you are.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lia Halloran & Kip Thorne, Cherie Hu, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, and more.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
My guest this week is Landon Ross.
Landon Ross is a Los Angeles artist working primarily in painting, sculpture, video, and installation. Ross’s work explores the ontology of mathematics, consciousness, the self, and seeks to explore origin-stories of a distinct epistemological stance: those derived from nature. The artist’s once-central role in channeling the human inclination for the transcendent or the sublime is one that Ross seeks to continue from within the framework of naturalism.
As you can tell from his bio, Landon isn’t your “typical” artist! I met him through my work as a curator. Earlier this year I was fortunate to launch SMALL V01CE, an exhibition I curated for Honor Fraser Gallery, which examined the intersection of artificial intelligence and instinct, intuition, and feelings.
As I was refining that concept last year with Honor, and beginning to have conversations with artists, Honor connected me with Landon. Our studio visit was jam-packed full of ideas, not just about art but politics, media, philosophy, math, cosmology, evolution, the list goes on.
As I knew he would, Landon did create incredible work for the show, which we not only talk about in the episode, but which you can see for yourself in the show’s exhibition trailer on YouTube (hint, hint). But more importantly Landon has remained a friend and someone I’m always excited to dive into conversation with.
In a moment when it feels like many people who hold strong opinions are just ragebaiting or dunking online, Landon’s strong positions are deeply researched and deeply felt. I admire this quality in him, even—perhaps especially—in the moments where our perspectives diverge. In a highly polarized environment, it’s hard to go against what is perceived to be the party orthodoxy—in the U.S., that’s team red and team blue, and the various subfactions. A certain set of ideas is meant to “belong” to one group vs the other, or the group is meant to only discuss particular aspects of issues and not mention others.
Of course, there are bad faith takes here, and I don’t want to discount those. But what happens when your beliefs don’t fall neatly into those camps? Sometimes that’s the case with Landon—such as his opinions about free speech and why it’s vital for democracy, or the notion that beauty has an objective quality to it. The fact that he’s resolute enough to continue to voice them makes his voice a special one to hear from, especially in such a complex moment. So much more to say, but I’ll let you hear it from him.
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Both things help the podcast grow. Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
Support Reality Studies:
NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.
MUD\WTR: Right now, get 43% off starter packs using this link and the code SUMMER. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)
NordVPN: Right now, get up to 69% off 2-year plans + a Saily eSIM data gift through this link. Some people tell me that “VPN” brings to mind ideas of hackers and the dark web, but honestly VPNs are just an extremely easy way to stay much safer online. I’ve used NordVPN for the past four years, and appreciate what they offer, including Threat Protection against malware, 24/7 customer support, fast speeds, and more. One account can protect up to 6 devices (phone and computer), and they don’t track or share what you do online. Another benefit: you can always access the content/apps you have at home, wherever in the world you are.
ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, I strongly recommend these. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).
Mission Farms CBD: Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff: I take one of their Marionberry Lemon gummies to end each day. There’s a lot of junk CBD on the market. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows. Go to this link and sign up for emails to get 25% off your first order.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lia Halloran & Kip Thorne, Cherie Hu, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, and more.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
My guest this week is Autumn Breon.
Autumn Breon is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the visual vocabulary of liberation through a queer Black feminist lens. Using performance, sculpture, and public installation, Breon invites audiences to examine intersectional identities and Diasporic memory. Breon imagines her work as immersive invitations for the public to join in the reimagining and creation of systems that make current oppressive systems obsolete. Breon has created commissions for Target, Art Production Fund, Frieze Art Fair, and the ACLU of Southern California. Breon’s performance history includes Hauser & Wirth, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Water Mill Center. She is an alumna of Stanford University where she studied Aeronautics & Astronautics and researched aeronautical astrobiology applications. Breon is a recipient of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship for Abolition & the Advancement of the Creative Economy and the Race Forward Fellowship for Housing, Land, and Justice.
Urgent Futures is no stranger to polymaths—folks who have idiosyncratic, hybrid expertise across domains—and Autumn definitely lives up to the term, from aeronautical astrobiology to arts and activism. This more recent expression of her practice encompasses many different forms, as you’ll see in this conversation. But what I so appreciate about her work is her commitment to equity, and using speculative futures, art, design, and performance to invite new imaginings for what contemporary reality could be. In some aspects this is super conceptual, such as in her use of Planet Esoterica as a storyworld from which she draws powerful metaphors, aesthetics, figures, and other artistic ideas. But in other aspects this imagining is rooted directly in the present, such as her groundbreaking Care Machine “Caravan,” through which she partnered with Plan C to provide free access to abortion pills for folks in different parts of the United States in the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Her focus on radical self-care feels like critical wisdom: it’s easy in the face of all the noise to throw ourselves into our work, whether that’s the grind of jobs and side hustles or activist causes. Either way, beginning from a place of self-care enables us in turn to genuinely care for others in our community—whatever form that community might take. It’s so simple and yet, speaking for myself, something that I forget so often. If you’re like me in that regard, this is definitely an important episode for you! And even if you have that all figured out, this episode is chock-full of insights across art, technology, activism, speculative fiction, and more, so buckle up!
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Both things help the podcast grow. Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
Support Reality Studies:
NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.
ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, I strongly recommend these.
Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).
NordVPN: Right now, get up to 69% off 2-year plans + a Saily eSIM data gift through this link. Some people tell me that “VPN” brings to mind ideas of hackers and the dark web, but honestly VPNs are just an extremely easy way to stay much safer online. I’ve used NordVPN for the past four years, and appreciate what they offer, including Threat Protection against malware, 24/7 customer support, fast speeds, and more. One account can protect up to 6 devices (phone and computer), and they don’t track or share what you do online. Another benefit: you can always access the content/apps you have at home, wherever in the world you are.
Mission Farms CBD: Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff: I take one of their Marionberry Lemon gummies to end each day.
There’s a lot of junk CBD on the market. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows. Go to this link and sign up for emails to get 25% off your first order.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find video episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe -
My guest this week is Nita Farahany.
Nita Farahany is a pioneering changemaker and leading authority at the intersection of law, ethics, and technology. As the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, and Founding Director of Duke Science & Society, she drives transformative discussions on technology's ethical implications. Her seminal book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology (2023), charts a pathway to cognitive freedom in an increasingly interconnected world. A highly sought after speaker, her insights resonate from TED stages to the World Economic Forum. Serving on President Obama’s Presidential Commission (2010-2017) and advising entities including the U.S. BRAIN Initiative and the World Economic Forum, her expertise influences global technology policy. With a JD and Ph.D. in law and philosophy from Duke University, an AB in Genetics from Dartmouth, and ALM in Biology from Harvard, Farahany's interdisciplinary background informs her role as a prominent voice shaping global discourse on emerging technologies. Her leadership has been recognized broadly, including by election to the American Law Institute, AAAS, appointment to the Uniform Laws Commission, and her advisory role for Scientific American.
I know everybody is still caught up on AI, and for good reason. But AI is far from the only technology that holds incredible promise and peril for our species. Another is neurotechnology. Neurotech is a broad, squishy category. On Wikipedia, it’s described as “[encompassing] any method or electronic device which interfaces with the nervous system to monitor or modulate neural activity.”
One form of neurotech that has garnered attention—or at least meme-able social media moments—is brain-computer interface technology. Remember the monkey playing pong with its brain using Neuralink technology? You probably know this already, but Neuralink is owned by Elon Musk. So let’s imagine for a moment that Neuralink succeeds in rolling out the first mainstream BCIs. How would you feel about that single company knowing your mental, emotional, and psychological responses to stimuli? Things you might not even realize about yourself?
Suddenly it makes a lot of sense why we need clear frameworks for protecting individuals now, rather than waiting until the technology is being rolled out to the public. This is why Professor Nita Farahany claims we urgently need to protect our fundamental right to “cognitive liberty.” She elaborates this idea in The Battle for Your Brain, what I see as the defining book on modern neurotechnology. Furthermore, she does an exceptional job in the book describing the state of affairs of neurotech as an industry and community, highlighting both the reasons to be excited and concerned about the technology, as well as sketching how we could begin incorporating legal protections through the human rights framework. And this week the book got a special paperbook release with an all-new chapter on—wait for it!—AI. So it’s a perfect time to go grab a copy, which I strongly encourage you to do!
If you’re loving the Urgent Futures podcast…
Please subscribe + leave a review on your preferred podcast platform! Both things help the podcast grow. Guests on Urgent Futures are experts across art, science, media, technology, AI, philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, journalism, and more. We live in complex times; these are the voices who will help you orient to emerging futures.
🎧 Audio versions of the podcast can be found Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, please subscribe!
Support Reality Studies:
NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.
ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, I strongly recommend these.
Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).
NordVPN: Right now, get up to 69% off 2-year plans + a Saily eSIM data gift through this link. Some people tell me that “VPN” brings to mind ideas of hackers and the dark web, but honestly VPNs are just an extremely easy way to stay much safer online. I’ve used NordVPN for the past four years, and appreciate what they offer, including Threat Protection against malware, 24/7 customer support, fast speeds, and more. One account can protect up to 6 devices (phone and computer), and they don’t track or share what you do online. Another benefit: you can always access the content/apps you have at home, wherever in the world you are.
Mission Farms CBD: Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff: I take one of their Marionberry Lemon gummies to end each day.
There’s a lot of junk CBD on the market. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows. Go to this link and sign up for emails to get 25% off your first order.
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lia Halloran & Kip Thorne, Cherie Hu, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, and more. Here is another recent episode with Cyborg co-authors Laura Forlano & Danya Glabau:
Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe - Show more
