Thinking Ahead with Carter Phipps

Once upon a time, French philosopher Henri Bergson was the most celebrated  public intellectual in the world. People stood in long lines just to get a glimpse of his lectures. He took the culture by storm, and had enormous influence on early 20th century thought across multiple fields. Then, Europe descended into war, the zeitgeist changed, and little by little he faded away. And in a post-war mod...

On this episode of Thinking Ahead, we return to the fascinating subject of UFOs, or UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon) as they are sometimes called.  I've already done a couple of podcasts on this topic (if you’d like a more introductory episode, I’d recommend listening to my interview with journalist Ross Coulthart ). This conversation ventures down the UFO rabbit hole with author and...

Regular listeners of this podcast may know that I have a special affinity for cats—house cats, certainly, but also the magnificent wild cats that still roam the American West. So when I learned recently that in my home state of Colorado, it’s still legal for trophy hunters to shoot hundreds of these beautiful creatures every year, I was horrified. Thankfully, Colorado’s big cats have a formidable...

John Mackey, cofounder of Whole Foods Market, is one of the great entrepreneurs of our time. But the story of how he built the iconic grocery store is just one thread in the tapestry of his rich and interesting life, which he discusses candidly in his recent memoir The Whole Story. This fascinating tale spans his remarkable life and career, from his Texas childhood to his spiritual breakthroughs,...

Today, we are in the middle of a sea change in the perception and use of psychedelics unlike anything that has occurred in recent decades and probably going back many centuries, at least in Western history. In fact, one probably has to go back to the early Christian era to see psychedelics so commonly used and accessible. And while there are a lot of great books that have been written on the subje...

On this episode of Thinking Ahead, we’re discussing one of my favorite subjects, evolution. Bobby Azarian is a cognitive neuroscientist, a science journalist, and a true evolutionary. His book The Romance of Reality explores the evolution of the universe and life, purpose, complexity, and consciousness with rich vision that far transcends the all-to-common reductionistic view. I’m always intereste...

The topic of race is never far from our lips when we are talking about the American experience. And yet, the complexities, confusions, minefields, and missteps that often confront those who work to overcome America’s racial legacy can make this a subject that people shy away from. That’s why my guest today is such a breath of fresh air. He’s taken the opposite approach, exploring issues of race an...

Too often, the questions that we ask about our own time-period reflect a limited understanding of history. For example, consider the question: why is there still poverty and inequality? It’s a worthy question, but an even better one might be: How did so many societies, against all odds and without historical precedent, escape poverty and become wealthy? How have we come so far in our attempt to es...

Steve McIntosh is already a regular guest on this podcast, and that’s no accident. Steve and I have been collaborating for many years, and we even cofounded the Institute for Cultural Evolution almost a decade ago. Steve is the President of the think tank and continues to build it, even as he releases important intellectual content, including his writings, books, talks, various podcast appearances...

As my regular listeners will know, I’m deeply influenced by the perspective known as Integral philosophy, and in particular, the insights it affords us into how human culture has evolved—and is still evolving today. This perspective informs the conversations I have on this podcast, to one degree or another. But every now and again, I get the opportunity to welcome a guest who is deeply versed in t...

Inflation. Recession. Bubbles. Interest rates. Sovereign debt crisis. Today, everyone’s financial portfolio is falling and that makes people upset about markets and economics. But being angry or frustrated about the market is easy, understanding how and why we arrived at this point  is much more challenging.  I was recently helped along in my journey of understanding by a fascinating new book, The...

What would you do if a whale landed on top of you—and you lived to tell the tale? That’s exactly what happened to wildlife biologist and filmmaker Tom Mustill in 2015, when a breaching humpback whale came crashing down on his kayak in California’s Monterey Bay—an event that was caught on video and quickly went viral. And what Tom did was to embark on a multi-year journey to better understand the i...

In the 2019 book American Cosmic , scholar Diana Pasulka offers a surprising and original perspective on one of my favorite topics: UFOs. She proposes that UFOs and the obsession with them has become a type of post-secular religion. She even shows that modern accounts of UFO encounters closely resemble religious visions of yesteryear. But one of the most interesting things about Pasulka’s book is...

When we think about energy, we often forget one critical element—the grid. Most of us depend every day on our national grid to supply the energy we need for our life and work. And our need for electricity continues to grow and is likely to increase further over the coming years with, among other things, the move to electric vehicles. So how do we build a grid that fits a future in which our need f...

If you’ve followed this podcast for a while, you’ll know that I’m something of an economics nerd, and occasionally I indulge this passion by choosing guests who can offer insight into our past, present, and future through a financial lens. I was particularly excited to speak with journalist and author Christopher Leonard because he speaks to issues that have been troubling me for some time about t...

Why did the leopard cross the road? Well, because he had to. He might have been searching for food, or a mate, or a new territory. But if he made it safely to the other side, it just might be because someone built him a bridge. And today's guest on Thinking Ahead might have had a hand in that effort. One of the many great challenges of this century, to my mind, is finding a way for nature to...

Psychedelics are having a moment. There’s never been a time in which we’ve seen more research into, experimentation with, and acceptance of the use of psychedelics—for therapy, for inner exploration, and for spiritual awakening. Of course, psychedelics themselves are anything but new (just ask Brian Muraresku, who shared with me on this podcast his fascinating research into their use over millenni...

Regular listeners of this podcast or those who have followed my work over the years will recognize the name Steve McIntosh. Steve and I have been collaborating for almost two decades, including as coauthors (with John Mackey) of Conscious Leadership and cofounders of the Institute for Cultural Evolution . He is also a regular guest on this show. In this episode, we reflect on the current progressi...

In our modern world, we often think of history as being mostly driven by international politics and economics and technology and demographics and the movement of money. Much of the time, that’s true. But every so often, events transpire that remind us that there are deeper undercurrents that also drive history—forces like religious passion, spiritual yearning, deep nationalism, and the search for...

When was the last time you remember a significant battle on the high seas? If you’re like me, such an event may well be hard to recall. I’m old enough to remember the Falklands war, but that’s about it. Today’s guest on Thinking Ahead, author Gregg Easterbrook, wants his readers to understand that that blank space in most of our memories is not an accident. It has come about courtesy of a very par...

Mariana Bozesan, author of Integral Investing: From Profit to Prosperity , has lived her life in several distinct worlds—from a childhood of painful poverty in communist Romania, to the technological optimism of Stanford and Silicon Valley, to the progressive business world of Germany and Europe where she found great success as an entrepreneur and investor. Perhaps it is that unique background and...

How do we think about race in America today? This question continues to be core to the evolution of our national experiment. And it has come even further to the forefront in recent years, as the progressive social justice movement in American politics has gained more and more prominence. In this episode of the podcast, I was thrilled to be able to explore this subject with Greg Thomas—musician, in...

UFOs. Or to use the current in-vogue acronym, UAPs.  It’s a topic rife with conspiracies and strange complexities. Many people just want to avoid it altogether. But it’s also an explosive story, with huge implications. And it’s gained enough legitimacy that we need to pursue it--to pursue the truths that still lay hidden, to follow the facts and the data, even if it forces us into areas that are u...

Would you like to live a bit longer, maybe a lot longer? Do you think it’s possible? Do you think it will be possible in the future? In this episode of Thinking Ahead, I want to introduce you to an individual who believes strongly in the potential for human longevity, in the near term and long term. His name is Sergey Young and his new book is called The Science and Technology of Growing Young. Yo...

For this episode, I’m happy to welcome back one of the first guests on this podcast, my longtime collaborator and cofounder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution, Steve McIntosh. Since that earlier conversation (which you can check out here ) Steve has continued his work to bring what he has called a “post-progressive” perspective to the political sphere. Recently, that work has taken an importa...