Future Fossils

This week’s guest is travel guide Simon Yugler – named one of Open World Magazine’s “Top 30 Adventurers Under 30,” Simon facilitates initiatory experiences as the leader of experiential education journeys for young adults.http://travel-alchemy.comHere’s Simon talking to UpliftConnect about the difference between “wanting to help” and “wanting to be of service”:https://youtu.be/JzIwXy4l4lY - “What cultural exchange looks like from a place of transformation and healing.”- Decolonizing Festival Culture.- Right Relationship & the difference between “Citizen Diplomacy” & “Mission Work.”- What it means to be a respectful guest.- The difference between tourists and locals: tourists look up (novelty and wonder).- What travel has to teach us about navigating our turbulent and transformational age.- How rootless modern people (digital nomads, refugees, wandering Jews, and so on) can reconnect with a sense of place and become a “person of place.”- How to RECEIVE people with respect and be a good host for travele

This week’s guest is the artist, gallery owner, podcaster, web designer, and musician Aunia Kahn! Among her many notable achievements, she curates Alexi Era Gallery in Oregon, hosted the Create & Inspire Podcast, and survived eleven years housebound with disability to emerge more creative, passionate, and powerful than before.http://auniakahn.comhttp://alexieragallery.comIn one of this podcast’s more rambling conversations, we discuss:- Internet & Cellphone Addiction (and the problem of “gameifying” everything to seize attention).- How the internet has changed the ways we present ourselves to one another online, splintered our identities, and changed our sense of time…- Using technology (especially social media) instead of letting technology use you.- Comparing the Internet and Organized Religion, and how institutions serve the role of “tigers” in the modern “jungle” of society.- Looking at the historical context of disability and the relative nature of contemporary problems.- How disease can shock us

This week, we spend some time with Joanna Harcourt-Smith, "Swiss-born British socialite," host of the Future Primitive Podcast, and author of Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story.Michael on Joanna’s 500+ Episode Podcast: http://www.futureprimitive.org/2016/11/the-crossroads-of-the-unexpected/Check out her archives. They’re amazing."God IS A Sense of Humor""Know That You're Everything"“To me, people are mushrooms. My claim to fame was the fact that I found the mushroom Timothy Leary in the forest. And I had to eat that mushroom so I could really start to flex the accordion of my being.”“I don’t even know that there IS a past and a future. The numerous psychedelic experiences I have been gifted with by life have told me that there is NO past and there is NO future.”“Everything lives. Everything wants to live. Nothing dies, it just becomes composted and intertwined with each other.”“When I make a soup, it’s like painting. Getting all these ingredients together is so exciting, it’s so

This week's guest is the delightful and insightful Susan Molnar!http://susanmolnar.com“Everything can be broken. But also, everything can be built. And sometimes, breaking it and then rebuilding it makes it even cooler.”Tech & Maker Education for ChildrenGoogle Policy Fellow for American Association for People with DisabilitiesLeukemia SurvivorWe Laugh A Lot(Where does my body end and somebody else’s product begin?)Programming Good ProgrammersThe Problem & The Promise of Education“There’s this student who comes in who’s like, ‘I’ve never touched a computer in my life and I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ So I was like, ‘Look. Nobody was born knowing what a pixel is. A pixel was invented. This mouse? This mouse was invented. You can learn a system. Tell me about things you have learned in your life that you have been able to use to progress from. Let’s start there.’”“I am not a person of color. I have a disability, but I don’t have some of the disabilities that my friends have

This week's guest is the loquacious, thoughtful, and profound JF Martel, film-maker and author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice and the three-part essay Reality is Analog, about the philosophical themes lurking behind Netflix's series Stranger Things.http://reclaimingart.com https://www.metapsychosis.com/reality-is-analog-philosophizing-with-stranger-things-part-one/We discuss what can and cannot be captured and communicated digitally…The Primordial, Deep, Subrational Forms of Poetry, Madness, Excess…“Ultimately, art does have a function: it’s to help us better navigate the infinite chaos that is reality.”The problem of overusing or misusing Occam’s Razor“We understand the nature of reality the moment we admit that we don’t know it…the moment we admit we CAN’T know it.”“Every concept kind of contains its own opposite, or casts its own shadow.”The difference between a Sign and a SymbolFaith or Rebellion? (Patriotism or Treason?)Azazel the Peacock Angel vs. Lucifer the Rebel AngelIs there an ultimate re

This week our guest is Tibet Sprague, former solar energy system manager and scholar-practitioner in search of sustainable alternatives to our unhealthy post-industrial communities.http://tibetsprague.com for all social links, writings, and project infoWe discuss:What it was like for Tibet growing up in a healthy community.The difference between communities online and in person.The possibility of a virtual nation, a modern silk road of digital nomads moving in between communities……but the issues with that, primarily its unsustainability, and the importance of working to create local communities and tribes.The tension between freedom and fullness of living, independence and interdependence as valued differently by different societies.What does it truly mean to be free and to have a society that promotes freedom?How our individual drives are sculpted by the agencies of our environments and the people with whom we surround ourselves – so even the drive for independence is a symptom of our interrelatedness.The ch

De-Anthropomorphizing The Universe / Science & The Filter Bubblewith Cory Allen, Audio Mastering Engineer & Mindfulness Trainer, Host of The Astral Hustle Podcasthttp://cory-allen.comhttp://releaseintonow.com“It’s just all what is. And I accept every state of being as glorious.”Two dedicated truth-seekers and cosmos-abiders make a lot of dirty jokes and somehow manage to harmonize their angles on the practice of rigorous inquiry into the nature of reality and consciousness…We have a totally tangential, irreverent, penetrating conversation. (Luckily for you it’s audio only.) Somehow it all hangs together…much like Cory and I would, if they ever found out about the unrecorded parts of this chat. (Kidding!)• The paradox of having a podcast that emphasizes memory and continuity having SO. MANY. RECORDING. GLITCHES. Bizarre plumage that doesn’t fossilize and how truly precious little we know of the ancient world.• Noticing what weirds you out: your surprise reveals your expectation.• Cory Allen’s “creepy”

This week, we take an hour to explore the frontiers of the human experience with Trevor Goodman of the Body Hacking Conference in Austin, Texas.https://bodyhackingcon.com/conferenceHere’s a bit about the conference from NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/03/10/468556420/body-hacking-movement-rises-ahead-of-moral-answers • Cybernetics, prosthetics, nootropics, body modification, bionics…• The origins and history of “body hacking.”• Body modification as an answer/solution to body dysmorphia (feeling out of place “in your own skin”).“Frankly, we have no clue how things are going to be in ten or twenty years. Twenty years ago we weren’t carrying our memories around in our pockets like we are now.”• How modern transhumanism is just an extension of the ancient human project that includes clothing, fire, and other technological augmentations.• How the freedom of the body is also the freedom of the mind.• Ethical issues of body modification as personal expression and identity and interactions wit

0014 Michael Phillip (Special Episode: Westworld Problems)With special guest, host of Third Eye Drops Podcast and fellow esoteric dork extraordinaire, Michael Phillip. We go deep into the layers underneath the layers of HBO’s awesome new show Westworld – its future angst and wonder, and what it can teach us about the value and meaning of human existence.SPOILER ALERT! We get into details of the Season Finale, so don’t listen to this unless you’ve seen it.Seriously.The show is worth it, though, so watch it and then come back to this conversation – in which we totally ignore the precedent of Battlestar Galactica while discussing Westworld’s awesome treatment of “Am I actually a robot?” and its evolution from the original 1970s version – and speculate on the world OUTSIDE of Westworld, the missing context for this robot violence playland that to us makes very little economic sense.https://youtu.be/K9AwvWGjJeQhttps://twitter.com/hashtag/westworldproblemshttp://www.mememaker.net/meme/convinced-i-have-free-will-may

This week’s episode features Dr. Rupert Till, aka Dr. Chill, who does actually hold the world’s first PhD in Electronic Music. Dr. Chill also has a habit of reconstructing ancient acoustic spaces from caves and temples, then writing electronic chill out music with 3D printed replicas of the world’s oldest instruments. In other words, he’s a badass at the intersection of academic archeology and international dance festival culture. A pretty great place to be.Dr. Chill’s Blog:https://rupertchill.wordpress.com/Dr. Chill’s set from Boom Festival 2016: https://soundcloud.com/rupert-chill/sets/boom-chillout-gardens-live-setDr. Chill on Boom Festival and living on the line between academia and festival culture: “I keep saying to people, this is work. I’m not here on holiday…I’m here disseminating the results from a 3.5 Million Pound European research project.” * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *We discuss the intersection of minimal electronica and the music and instruments of

This week our guest is Mark Lee (Somnio8), an amazing artist. One of my favorite visionary painters. We spoke in the Museum of Visionary Art at Boom Festival about free energy devices, the creative culture of Bali, and the awesome potentials of our collective future... http://somnio8.com is currently down so check out his FB page: https://www.facebook.com/somnio8/A very soft spoken dude, too, so apologies in advance for the festival background noise.* Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *Don Harris’ inherited patent for radionics technology and the nature of the strange pocketwatch-like device that Mark was holding during our interview (which you can see a picture of [here]).A bit of not-precisely scientific exposition of radionics, scalar wave technology, the Casimir Effect, antigravity, and so on. Short detours into the Michaelson-Morley Experiment, the supposed disproof of the luminiferous ether, and more recent perspectives on a superfluid rather than solid ether as the

A special Boom Festival "Future Fossils on The Road" episode featuring some awesome people Michael met while playing and speaking at the amazing biennial psytrance festival in Portugal.Shaft Uddin is a Tantric Unicorn and Sacred Sexual Awakener (with noisy arm bangles): http://sacredsexualawakening.com* Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *We discuss:Shadow work, “turning into the swerve,” and going into darkness to claim the light. Realizing that the monster in your dream is you. Dealing with people’s projections and how to make peace with the people who embody your opposite or rejected self – in other words, how to be a “polyamorous sex cult leader” with grace and dignity and humility.“There’s nothing wrong with desire. There’s nothing wrong with harnessing your sexual energy for greater abundance and manifestation.”The dam is to the river system as the taboo is to the body. How do our needs to control nature manifest in ways that obstruct or interfere with our well-being?

In this special double episode, we're joined by musician-wizards Anthony Thogmartin (Earth Cry, Papadosio) and David Krantz (Futexture, former Moog Synthesizers employee, and director of psychoacoustics at Apeiron Center) in which we all kind of end up interviewing each other and have a conversation about the ordering and disordering of time, completely out of order (introductions halfway through the episode, et cetera). * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield * We talk about:- creative process workflow time loops and the difference of looping over minutes or years- artificially intelligent digital simulacra of ourselves, exploring alternate biographies- analog modular synthesis as collaborating with a living creature- random number generators and the ghost in the machine - collective consciousness- tripping with cats and electronics- sensitive instruments detecting invisible realities and scalar waves- synchronizing people with trees, brains with other brains, and other entra

This week's guest, Ashley Dawson, is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center/City University of New York, and the author of Extinction: A Radical History (as well as an extensive list of publications on sociology, economics, and literature).His book's argument – that capitalism's innate drive to grow and consume is essentially incompatible with sustainability – makes Extinction something in between an ecological treatise written by a communist and an economic manifesto written by an ecologist. * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *We had a fascinating and challenging conversation with Professor Dawson – a disarmingly modest and thoughtful fellow in spite of his fiery and politically charged writing. Part of acknowledging our role as ancestors-in-training is the unpleasant responsibility for examining our generation's role in the mass extinction of The Human Age.His ardent voice as a liberal intellectual, examining capitalism-caused mass extinction as an offense agains

“The battlefield has gone more and more internally, more into our minds.” - Kingsley Dennis http://kingsleydennis.com/In this episode we hang out with Kingsley Dennis, prolific author and one of the most articulate voices in the emerging global movement of “new monasticism.” * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield * Kingsley joined us from his gorgeous home in Spain to talk about…well, almost everything:– Reimagining the planet as a living cell with the help of biologist Lewis Thomas;– Flocking and schooling behavior in humans, and how outlier “weirdos” form the skin/edges/sensate drivers of culture (a shift from the periphery, not the center);– Gregory Bateson’s “difference that makes a difference” and information as inherently meaningful (a qualitative dimension to “data” that we largely ignore, but will be integrated into the wisdom of a mature society); – Violent revolutions in the aftermath of new information technologies, and the deconstruction of hierarchical control – 

Featuring comedian Shane Mauss, to our knowledge the only person to have ever written feature length comedy routines about the evolutionary psychology of sex or about psychedelics. Shane is an amazingly humble dude, considering he interviews scientists for fun when he's not blowing people's minds and guts with his ballsy humor about the untouchably weird dimensions of human existence. His podcast Here We Are is a veritable compendium of brilliant conversations that become the fuel for his smart jokes, and we highly recommend you check that out after you've enjoyed this radical discussion (in which Shane and Michael were on Skype in separate rooms of the same house – the sacrifices that we make for clean recordings!):Shane's links: www.shanemauss.com twitter.com/shanecomedy www.herewearepodcast.com* Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *Take the perspective of future archeologists digging through the digital remains of modern culture. What will our generation's legacy look lik

Featuring cyborg anthropologist and process worker Maraya Karena, whom Michael met in Peru once upon a time, and who can nimbly leap from talk of high technology to casual reflections on accessing visionary consciousness. Maraya delivers us a dose of much-appreciated lucid, grounded female sensibility to this hapless dorkfest...Follow up with by subscribing to Maraya's blog and YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/marayakarena marayakarena.wordpress.com * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield * Take the perspective of future archeologists digging through the digital remains of modern culture. What will our generation's legacy look like to future humans? Explore the nature of time and our place in it through the conversations of the unconventional, bizarre, free-roaming, fun, irreverent, and thoughtful kind...an auditory psychedelic to get you prepared for living in a wilder future than we can imagine.Provocative, profound discussions at the intersection of art, science, and p

Featuring documentarian, psychonaut, and meta-media wizard Mitch Schultz, director/producer of the documentary "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" and founder of Mythaphi. A more than usually enthusiastic group rap on the awesome potential of new media to shift the global story and deliver us into a world of awesome collaborative potential... Evan and Michael met as performers at one of Mitch's events years ago (the DMT RMX party at South By Southwest 2012) so it's like a family reunion having this guy on the show. Not to mention he's a popular podcast guest on other shows like The Joe Rogan Experience, Erik Davis' Expanding Mind, and many others...we're so lucky that we get to share this with you! Check Mitch's work out here: http://thespiritmolecule.comhttp://mythaphi.com* Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *Take the perspective of future archeologists digging through the digital remains of modern culture. What will our generation's legacy look like to future humans? Explore the n

On asteroid mining, the origins of life, growing up during the Apollo Program and the importance of unifying society under visions for Great Projects (see also: Project Hieroglyph), the magic of lipids, thinking fractal and the similarity between chemical and technological cells, new genetic base pairs and the geological evidence of ancient oceans, pitching NASA and Elon Musk on a plan to protect Earth from asteroids and comets (and settle the best real estate in the solar system), the legacy of Biosphere 2, the persistent evolutionary advantage to working in collectives, and more... * Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield * Bruce Damer is a living legend – not only the guy who taught NASA how to capture asteroids but ALSO the co-author of some amazing new research on the origins of life. You've probably already heard him on Joe Rogan, Duncan Trussell, and Third Eye Drops, but for our shameless geek-stravaganza he really let it fly. This is a no-holds-barred exploration of all

In this week's episode, we interview our first guest, author Tony Vigorito, and go ape on thoughts about the nature of synchronicity – are we just making this stuff up? Tony's work has been praised repeatedly and effusively by literary greats like Tom Robbins, so even before you get through a single sentence of his florid, playful, genius, totally abundant and absurdly tasty prose you know you're dealing with a singular mind. He's also taught sociology at universities in Austin and Northern California, as well as to festival audiences all over. Michael met Tony when they were on a panel together at the visionary art theme camp Entheon Village at Burning Man in 2009, and it was love at first sight. He's as fun as he is authoritative, so strap in and get ready for a gorgeous little trip through the emergent angel that occurs at the confluence of three very balanced armchair philosophers...Tony's website: tonyvigorito.com* Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield * Take the perspect