Future Thinkers

Our guest in the next two episodes is Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist, lecturer, and author of Team Human, as well as a dozen other books on media, technology, and culture. In recent years, he has become a critic of technology for separating us from what makes us human. Show notes: http://www.futurethinkers.org/93

We're excited to host Rupert Sheldrake in this episode, a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. Besides getting into the details of this hypothesis, we also talk about paradigm shifts in science, psy phenomena, experiments in consciousness, and about his new book called "Ways to Go Beyond And Why They Work," where he describes some of the most well known spiritual practices for altering consciousness. Complete show notes: futurethinkers.org/92 

This is Part 2 of our interview with Joe Brewer of the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution, where we talk about modern versions of rites of passage, and why they are important. We also discuss the ways to support cultural evolution and develop regenerative cultures that are capable of dealing with global problems and existential risks. Show notes page: futurethinkers.org/91 Sign up for Future Thinkers Course on Personal Evolution: futurethinkers.org/evolution 

Our guest in this episode is Joe Brewer, Executive Director at the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution. Joe is a complexity researcher, cognitive scientist, and evangelist for regenerative culture design. We invited him onto the show because we felt that our ideas about adult development, rites of passage, and overcoming the chasm of nihilism strongly resonated with his thinking and work on cultural evolution.

Identity politics have become a hot topic in the Western world. People tend to attach their sense of identity to certain political ideas, gender identity, ethnic or religious group, sexual orientation etc, and often get triggered when they perceive their identity is being threatened. Today we discuss why it is useful and important to detach from these categories in order to develop psychologically. We talk about how to deconstruct your identity and tell the stories of how we have done it.

In this episode we are discussing the concept of "adulting" and why it's relevant today. We also talk about how being an adult will change in the future and what meta-skills one needs to develop in order to adapt to the fast-changing world. Adulting is an ironic term used by the Millenial generation to describe holding grown up responsibilities like paying the bills or taxes for example, but not feeling like an actual adult while doing that.

We have recently participated and spoke at DGOV Council in Berlin, an event that explored new principles of human-centric scalable governance. The experience inspired us to think more deeply about distributed governance, the emergence of collective intelligence, anti-fragility and sovereignty. In this episode we are discussing what kind of collective system is possible in the future and how to manage the diversity of values in such system.

Our guest in this episode is Alex Gladstein, the Chief Strategy Officer at Human Rights Foundation and VP of Strategy for Oslo Freedom Forum. We attended and spoke at Oslo Freedom Forum last year, and it was one of the best conferences we have ever been to - it was really well produced, with amazing participants who talked about important topics and ideas.

In this part, we look at how artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness will shape the future of work and life, what will make humans uniquely useful in this scenario, and reasons to be optimistic for the future.

Today our guest is Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, former publisher of the Whole Earth Review, and author of many books, including his latest one called "The Inevitable", which forecasts the twelve technological forces that will shape the next thirty years. This episode airs in two parts. In the first, we talk about what technology wants, the new sharing economy, and creating a smart environment.

Duncan Trussell - actor, comedian and the host of Duncan Trussell Family Hour, is back on Future Thinkers for the second time. In this episode we talk about some of the pressing topics of our time, like developing individual and collective consciousness, evolving the structure and functioning of the human society, and the importance of a consistent spiritual practice for understanding ourselves and the world we live in.

In part two we cover the basics of the gift economy, the concepts of economic de-growth and demonetization, and what it takes to implement these changes in our societies. We also talk about restoring the wealth of time, relationships and meaning.

Our guest in this episode is Charles Eisenstein, the author of "Sacred Economics" and his most recent book "Climate: A New Story". Charles explores deep civilization narratives and mythologies, and connections between economics, politics and spirituality. We talk about why the current narrative of climate change is not working, and how to create conditions for a deep change on the personal and collective level.

The last two feminine archetypes we are covering in this series are The Witch and The Queen. The common association with The Witch is a wicked old woman that we see in many movies or stories for children. However, this interpretation has a lot of historical religious bias, which we deconstruct in this episode. We discuss The Witch in her fullest - as a powerful creative force and bringer of disruptive ideas.

Today we are exploring the feminine archetype of The Lover, which to a certain extent mirrors its masculine counterpart but also has its own specific traits. The feminine Lover is the embodiment of love, beauty and creativity. While researching this topic, we've discovered that it is difficult to talk and write about this archetype, as female sexuality still hasn't been fully reconciled and accepted in post-agricultural society.