Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff

🔗 Go to http://groundnews.com/th to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on the stories shaping our world. Systems thinker Samantha Sweetwater joins Douglas Rushkoff to explore how we stay human in a world coming apart. They discuss nervous system regulation, embodiment as political strategy, moving beyond oppositional activism, metabolizing grief, recl...

🌍 Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff: http://patreon.com/teamhuman Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor join Douglas Rushkoff to discuss their new book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, exploring the forces driving authoritarianism, the seductive fantasy of escape, the growing alliance between technology and power, and what it mean...

🔗 Go to http://groundnews.com/th to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on the stories shaping our world. Douglas Rushkoff sits down with author, journalist, and Spy magazine co-founder Kurt Andersen to explore what happens when a country can no longer agree on what’s real. Using Andersen’s new novel The Breakup, which imagines a near-future America fr...

🔗 Go to groundnews.com/th to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on the stories shaping our world. Artist Kenya (Robinson) joins Douglas Rushkoff to explore what happens when the boundary between art and everyday life disappears. From earning an MFA at Yale to working as a mail carrier and training as an auto mechanic, (Robinson) reflects on class, rac...

🌍 Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff: http://patreon.com/teamhuman Douglas Rushkoff is joined by storyteller and thinker Catherine Connors to explore Pope Leo XIV’s remarkable intervention into the AI debate. Together, they unpack his critique of transhumanism, technological inevitability and Silicon Valley’s vision of human progress and his ra...

What if anarchism isn’t chaos, but a way of putting human beings back in charge of their own lives? Douglas Rushkoff is joined by former British diplomat Carne Ross, for a conversation about power, democracy, mutual aid, and what it actually takes to change the systems governing our lives. Ross argues that the means are the ends: we don’t have to wait for a revolution, a new president, or some ima...

Rushkoff breaks down why modern money acts like a forever chemical: A toxic, non-decaying asset designed to accumulate at the top of the pyramid rather than support living communities. Rushkoff traces how central currencies replaced organic, local exchange systems to enforce debt and growth mandates. He exposes how this same extractive logic links legacy finance, crypto grifts, and the current AI...

Rushkoff sits down with renowned chef Benjamin Castro of Benjamin's Kitchen to explore the intersection of food, community, and what it means to nourish the human spirit.  Chef Castro shares his journey, breaking down why food is more than just fuel. 🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the co...

Are we so focused on saving the world that we’re forgetting how to care for it?   Rushkoff explores the paralyzing ambient terror of the meta-crisis, polycrisis, and impending societal collapse. Recounting a transformative personal experience sitting at the bedside of a dying relative, Rushkoff re-evaluates the urge to fix everything through abstract strategies and grand interventions. Instead of...

Rushkoff sits down with author, podcaster, and scholar Conner Habib (Against Everyone with Conner Habib, Hawk Mountain) for a conversation about what we have to lose before anything can change. They move from dying-before-you-die and the idea that civilization has not yet begun, into Rudolf Steiner's Ahriman -- the force of cold reduction that wants to convince us we're just biological rob...

As President of The Atlantic and former Editor-in-Chief of Wired, Nicholas Thompson sits down with Rushkoff to discuss the precarious intersection of artificial intelligence, journalism, and American democracy. Thompson breaks down how The Atlantic turned its business around using paywall optimization, why they chose to form a partnership with OpenAI instead of solely fighting them in court, and t...

Rushkoff breaks down the intellectual hubris driving Silicon Valley: Effective Altruism (EA), Longtermism, and AI accelerationism. From Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX collapse to the tech oligarchs attempting to optimize human presence through code, Rushkoff exposes how treating human lives as simple spreadsheet inputs creates a dangerous ends justify the means worldview. Drawing on philosophers like Alb...

We once looked at pictures. Now, pictures are looking back at us. Renowned artist and author Trevor Paglen joins Rushkoff to expose how computer vision, generative AI, and algorithmic feedback loops are fundamentally reformatting human perception, labor, and democracy itself. What happens to a society when its default assumption becomes that all media is untethered from reality? In this episode of...

Sophie Strand (author of The Flowering Wand and The Body Is a Doorway) joins Rushkoff for a conversation about breaking free from the dominant paradigms of our time. Together, they challenge the Silicon Valley Sky God obsession with scaling up, critique the limitations of institutional think tanks, and dive into how modern systems have systematically stripped us of our foundational skills. From th...

Rushkoff breaks down the disturbing cultural shift toward Might Makes Right, a playground philosophy that values raw power, wealth, and violence over morality and mutual aid.  From the organic, joyful street celebrations of the New York Knicks winning the NBA Finals to the surreal, hyper-industrial gladiatorial spectacle of the UFC erected right on the South Lawn of the White House, Rushkoff explo...

"The most useful framework is that our country’s been invaded. But like all great invasions, it involves new techniques." - Adam McKay Academy Award-winning filmmaker Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short, Succession) dissects the urgent cultural, political, and planetary moment we are living through. McKay brings a massive unified theory exploring how our prehistoric evolutionary limit...

Mitch Horowitz returns to Team Human for a fiery, provocative exploration of his new book, Esoterika: Formulas Against the False Self.  Rushkoff and Horowitz grapple over one of the most foundational concepts in modern mindfulness: The Serenity Prayer. While Rushkoff shares his recent journeys into radical porousness, learning how to surrender, accept grace, and metabolize the world’s heavy energi...

How do we keep the machine from pulling us into another world, or escaping into ours? Rushkoff is joined by OG game designer, hacker, and Director of Curiouser Institute Reed Berkowitz to explore the liminal space between reality, fiction, and artificial intelligence. From the early days of late-80s text-based worlds and San Francisco’s cyberdelic rave culture to the complex modern landscape of AI...

Rushkoff contrasts the blissful, terrifying reality of voluntary dissolution with our pyramid-building civilization. From the ancient pyramids of Egypt to tech billionaires injecting themselves with young blood, humanity has built a world based on accumulation, extraction, and freezing time. He argues true power doesn't come from maintaining a rigid, permanent self-hood or uploading your consc...

If building a better future looks like a miserable exercise in self-denial, nobody is going to join. Rushkoff sits down with author and activist Sarah Wilson to discuss her new book, 'I Eat the Stars" Together, they discuss why environmental and activist movements have been weighed down by guilt, and why the alternative to industrial capitalism has to look, feel, and be better than the sta...

Following a recent New York Times expose on a high-profile AI book scandal, Rushkoff takes us behind the scenes of the modern grift factory. More than just a cautionary tale about generative AI, this week's monologue is an exploration of ego, FOMO, and intuition. Why did Rushkoff ignore his own spidey sense that something was off? As the world fills with synthetic fabrications, trusting our bo...

"If you are involved in any act of creation... that to me is magic, pure and simple."  Legendary writer, magician, and shaman Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Jerusalem, The Great When) joins Rushkoff on for a transcendent exploration of idea space, the power of linguistic maximalism, and how we can reclaim our imaginative sovereignty.  🌍 To support Team Human, get ad-free versions o...

Rushkoff shares a story he has never told publicly: The tragic car accident 40 years ago that claimed the life of his best friend and college partner-in-justice, Steven Ratushewitz. Rushkoff explores the grueling reality of carrying someone else's ghost, the intersection of art and activism, and the profound psychedelic realization that finally allowed him to grieve. From resisting the elite c...

Is local activism just a cute distraction, or is it the most vital layer of human survival?   Charlotte Binns, Director of Sustainability for the Village of Irvington and a dedicated community organizer, explores why the most effective response to global crises, from climate change to social isolation, starts right on your own block. Binns argues that while working at scale can be disheartening, t...

Are we living in reality, or just navigating a map of symbols, metrics, and dead things? Rushkoff stepped away from notifications, Google Calendars, and his always-on world to attend a shamanic workshop in Costa Rica. He experienced a kundalini awakening that revealed a different way of navigating existence: One based on somatic resonance rather than strategic manipulation. 🤝 Team Human is proudl...