Team Human

Just getting a thousand humans into a room together to sit and watch other humans act out something on stage is the miracle. Playwright J.T. Rogers understands why the very act of doing live theater is so hopeful, and applies this hope to intractable problems like the Middle East conflict - with surprising, and Tony-nominated results.Also, a monologue from Douglas Rushkoff on the Manchester bombing, and what it means when a fatal stampede at a Who concert in Cincinnati can be considered the good old days.More on J.T. Rogers, including tickets and info for his critically acclaimed work Oslo, at jtrogerswriter.com. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Team Human, we discover one of the reasons why knowing history matters. William Hogeland, author of Autumn of the Black Snake, tells the story of how and why the US Army was created - not to defend our borders, but to wipe out indigenous nations. And all that, in an effort to satisfy the growth mandate embedded in our economy by heroes of the neoliberal left like Alexander Hamilton. Make no mistake: Hogeland is a live wire.The show opens with a related monologue from Rushkoff about why successful businesses should refrain from scaling up. How about staying local, and letting other companies just copy your model? Why and how has the need to scale and colonize new territory become our default?Purchase Autumn of the Black Snake:  Indie Bound -or- AmazonRead more from Hogeland on the book here.Team Human is supported thanks to listeners. Visit teamhuman.fm to pledge your support. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human is Micah Sifry. Next month Micah will host the 2017 Personal Democracy Forum. On today’s show, Micah and Douglas discuss how the stakes are higher than ever for bringing people into an active civic life and engagement with democracy. Looking beyond the 2016 electoral postmortems and whodunits, Micah and Douglas talk about the power of humans breathing together–conspiring–in real space and time, while also leveraging technologies of connection, to build an actionable progressive agenda. Listeners of Team Human will find kindred spirits at the Personal Democracy Forum and Civic Hall. If you voted and you've been marching and calling your representatives but are still looking for ways to enhance your civic power and find community, PDF 2017 is ready for you. Personal Democracy Forum 2017, themed What We Do Now, will be held June 8-9 at the NYU Skirball Center, NYC. Team Human will be recording on location at this year’s PDF. Also check out Team Human Ep. 07 recorded at last year’

Playing for Team Human today is musician Tessa Lena. Tessa's music explores the tension between technology and human agency. In her songs and in this interview, Tessa playfully challenges robotic conceptions of humanity. Tessa offers a compelling argument for power of music to call us out of those automatic, quantified notions of self and society.Both Lena and Rushkoff pose essential questions; Is technology being used to extend our human potential? Does the embedded economic agenda driving technology inevitably thwart ambitions that focus on people over profit?Tessa's brand new record Tessa Fights Robots serves as the launching point for a true Team Human conversation about the power of art, music, and play in an increasingly robotic society.Team Human is supported by listeners. A special thanks to our new supporters as well as all of our monthly sustainers who make each episode possible. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Pia Mancini. Pia is a visionary democracy activist who co-founded the Net Party in Argentina and DemocracyOS. Today Pia joins Douglas to talk about her new project Open Collective. Open Collective is platform that helps small, non-traditional organizations to collectivize, raise funds, and manage expenses in a networked and transparent fashion. Open Collective is a useful resource for listeners who are trying to build sustainable funding for their local community group, political organization, and even school club. Pia explains how Open Collectives not only is helping to fund a growing number of unique organizations, but signals a future where transparent, collective partnerships might foster new models of democratic participation and exchange of resources.Douglas begins today's show with a monologue on shame. How is shame used as an instrument of social control? Rushkoff advances a thesis on how open, transparent social organizing, like what is being fostered by Pia and O

Playing for Team Human today is author and Bloomberg Businessweek and New Yorker columnist David Sax. Sax’s latest book Revenge of the Analog, Real Things and Why They Matter explores the resurgence of the tactile, human-to-human, brick-and-mortar encounters that characterize the analog experience. How might our rekindled love of vinyl LPs, local book stores, and face-to-face interaction help reground society to the physical realities of land, labor, and our fellow humans? Sax and Rushkoff explore the real world experiences and “flesh and blood consequences" that lie just beyond the glow of our screens and mediated environments.In today’s show monologue, Rushkoff looks at the extreme political and policy binaries being pushed by the Trump administration. He argues for an embrace of liminal spaces; the continuous, ambiguous, and messy analog work of building peace in these turbulent times. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today, memeticist and social change agent Laszlo Karafiath Ph.D.Laszlo, memetic engineer for Culture 2, shares his analysis of the weaponized media now paralyzing so much of our thought, and tells us what we have to do - collectively - to build our immunity to thought viruses. Together Karafiath and Rushkoff look at the ways we might redeploy memetic power to foster positive social change. You can learn more about Karafiath's work at www.purposeandplay.com or follow him on twitter.Also on today's show - Rushkoff on avoiding the rabbit holes of speculation and distraction in the context of war and the volatile Trump administration. How might we get back to the work of rebuilding society rather than being pulled deeper into the sensationalized narratives unfolding on our screens? Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A unique episode of Team Human, on today's show Douglas Rushkoff is joined by longtime friend and counterculture legend R.U. Sirius (aka Ken Goffman), founding editor of Mondo 2000. R.U. will help us evaluate the place of the counterculture in the digital landscape. Is counterculture even possible today? Is humanity itself the counterculture as we resist increasingly quantified and abstracted lives? Together R.U. and Rushkoff playfully and thoughtfully examine these questions while asserting those quirky yet challenging expressions of humanity not so easily reduced to code or marketing demographics.The music on today's show comes from a variety of R.U. Sirius's musical projects. Visit https://rusirius.bandcamp.com/ to listen. Follow Sirius's work at https://stealthissingularity.com/. Musicians are encouraged to connect with R.U.Sirius to collaborate. Needle drops in this show:Glad-Handed I PoliticianPunching A Nazi Be My Valerie SolanisLove is the Product President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time Get

Playing for Team Human today is Bas van Abel. Bas is the founder of Fairphone, which began with the radical idea that technology should be built without exploiting human laborers and destroying the planet. Van Abel's experiment of building a "fair" phone has taken him around the world to witness first-hand the lives made invisible in the digital supply chain. Bas and Douglas talk about how putting people first requires both a redesign of economic systems and a reshaping of our individual perspectives as consumers in an age of hyper-materialism.Learn more about Fairphone here. Watch this VPRO documentary on producing the fairphoneOn today's opening monologue, Rushkoff on his weekend viewing of the Broadway sensation Hamilton and the tension between retreating into fantasy versus committing to fix our reality.Photos thanks to Fairphone's Flickr Photostream Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is media historian and theorist Caroline Jack. Caroline is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Data + Society Research Institute. In today's episode Caroline and Douglas explore how powerful people and institutions shape networked civic life through media and communications technology. Caroline has us think deeply and broadly about corporate personhood, imagined machines, epistemological chaos… in other words–media and persuasion.You can find more of Caroline Jack’s work on her Medium Blog including this recent piece entitled “What’s Propaganda Got To Do With It?”In today's monologue Rushkoff offers a thought-provoking take on the exhausting and overwhelming news cycle. Rather than be defeated by cynicism, how might we foster both internal coherence and focused collaborative action? Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is digital media artist, activist, and filmmaker Alex Rivera. Known for his acclaimed 2008 feature film, Sleep Dealer, Rivera's work explores the contradictions of a free-flowing globalized economy and the simultaneous stigmatizing of immigrant laborers and erecting of border walls. Together, Rivera and Douglas Rushkoff interrogate the rhetoric of the digital "global village." We'll learn about what Rivera calls "Dronification," a highly connected, yet ever-more alienated digital subjectivity. Rivera and Rushkoff then discuss how we might restore true human connection and build bottom-up solidarity, or what the Zapatistas call "globalization from below."In today's intro monologue Rushkoff considers the need for both empowering local, grassroots organizing as well as fortifying public structures that bring the benefit of mutual aid and collectivity up to scale.This episode closes with a song from Team Human co-producer/editor Stephen Bartolomei, entitled&nb

Playing for Team Human today is activist trainer and executive director of theRules.org, Alnoor Ladha.Ladha will help us understand the interplay between political organization, system thinking, storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power. In a conversation spanning a wide range of topics including anarchism, collective organizing, local economies, psychedelics, and even spirituality, Ladha and Rushkoff underscore the multifaceted and necessary work of building a resilient and just society.Learn more about Alnoor and his work at http://therules.org/In today's monologue Rushkoff addresses the deleterious effects of our algorithmically programmed cyber experience. Are Facebook and Google a threat to the health of civil society? How can we restore human agency and critical thinking to our digital lives? Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Jason Van Anden. Jason is an artist, inventor, and software developer who builds apps to promote social justice. In 2011, Van Anden invented I’m Getting Arrested, software that enabled Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to alert friends and family in the event they were arrested. In 2012 Van Anden developed Stop and Frisk Watch , a tool used to monitor the New York City Police Department’s controversial practice. Van Anden has since has gone on to head Quadrant 2, developers of Mobile Justice, a police video taping app and part of the Bystanders Rule! platform. Quadrant 2 is also currently developing Workit, designed to offer networked support for 1.3 million non-unionized Walmart employees.In this episode, Van Anden and Rushkoff talk about flipping handheld digital technology toward human ends. How can technology be re-centered to effect real world change? How might technology promote proactive, activist efforts on the ground? Van Anden and Rushkoff, look at these questions and

Playing for Team Human today is data-visualization humanist Danne Woo. Woo is going to share with us how he uses data to provoke critical thinking, humor, and even human connection with his creative design. Woo is the creator of Data Visual  a user-friendly web-based design interface that empowers individuals to create their own shareable data-driven graphics. We'll learn why the Trump presidency has inspired Woo to design "a chart a day" and to "make tweets trump again". Dannewoo.com is where you can find a link to Woo’s work. Check out the politically inspired projects like “Make Tweets Trump Again” and Woo’s Chrome extension “Don’t Support Trump Supporters” driven by data from the #grabyourwallet campaign. Woo’s site also features creative works including Woo’s large format multiplayer game Splat! and his generative font project,Type Galapagos, plus the fantastically quirky music projects AC Symphony and Light Hum.Design your own data visualizatio

Playing for Team Human today is Brian Fitzgerald, co-founder of Tinkergarten. Tinkergarten began as the passion project of Brian and his wife, Meghan, a long-time educator. As new parents, Brian and Meghan were looking for hands-on, outdoor learning experiences for their daughter. Unable to find any, they started Tinkergarten. Today, Tinkergarten is a growing community focused on bringing memorable, tactile, and outdoor educational play opportunities to children and parents. Brian shares how his background in technology and education led him to build networking tools that help get kids off of screens and out into the physical world. You can become a Tinkergarten leader, find your own local Tinkergarten, or even download free DIY Tinkergarten lesson plans at tinkergarten.com.Today’s episode kicks off with Douglas Rushkoff answering a question he has received more and more since launching Team Human: “Are you anti-digital?”   Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.co

Playing for Team Human today is Silvia Zuur. In 2012, Zuur founded Chalkle to reignite adult education in New Zealand. Today, Zuur serves as a director at Enspiral, a social impact network that builds community driven solutions for a diverse set of issues including education, funding, and cooperative organizing. Enspiral is famously home to Loomio, a cooperative founded 2012 to create more effective tools for collaborative decision-making. Zuur joins Douglas Rushkoff to talk about the value of open, people-focused organizing strategies and her efforts to facilitate sustainable solutions for positive social change.Enspiral offers a number of resources from accounting strategies, metrics, apps, volunteer resources, and decision making tools on their ventures page.Visit handbook.enspiral.com for a model on how Enspiral has structured their business. Enspiral also relates the details of both their successes and struggles on their blog, blog.enspiral.com.  Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See aca

This week’s Team Human is part 2 of a fascinating conversation between longtime friends Zach Leary and Douglas Rushkoff. Check out part 1 over on Zach’s show, It’s All Happening. Rushkoff and Zach take a winding path through the “psychedelic substrate” of digital technology, looking back at the strange trips that birthed the modern web and virtual space of the internet. Most importantly, Leary and Rushkoff retrieve those human connections; the compassion, vision, and care for others that still just might save us in the digital age.Rushkoff begins today’s show with a thought provoking monologue. Is resistance futile in a digital society? Tune in to find out more! Episode page photo credit: Flickr User Joi Ito  Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is L.A. Kauffman. Douglas met with Kauffman on the eve of the release of her new book, Direct Action, Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism, published by Verso press. Direct Action charts a history of renewal and reinvention in activist movements since the 1960s with a focus on how we might learn from both the successes and failures of our radical past.In today’s episode, L.A. offers an invigorating commitment to protest, grassroots organizing, and the fight for justice. Douglas and L.A. spoke just days before Women’s March on Washington. They discuss what direct action means by connecting the dots from Mayday action of 1971 and ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s, all the way up to the mobilization happening this month in Washington and across the country.Links:From Verso: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2331-direct-action :“Propelled by more than 100 candid interviews conducted over a span of decades, this elegant and lively history showcases the voices of key player

Playing for Team Human is Jonathan Larsen. Larsen is a journalist, comedy writer, and TV producer who has worked on the Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart, Up w/ Chris Hayes, and Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. Larsen recently launched TheFingNews.com, a news digest that brings context, analysis, and humor to the daily news.Jonathan joins Douglas Rushkoff to talk about the Fucking News and the new Indivertible Guide. In a wide-ranging conversation, Larsen and Rushkoff look behind the scenes of reporting and discuss propaganda, fake news, and strategies for resisting the reality TV show era of the Trump presidency.From the Indivertible Guide:“We believe that the next four—Jesus H. Christ—years depend on citizens across the country standing indivertible against the mainstream media bullshit agenda. Our premise is that even evil Trump supporters and craven TV news people are good at heart. We believe that buying into TV news’ false crises and speculative narratives will only further empower Trump to victimize our fel

Playing for Team Human is Brian Hughes. Brian is a recent graduate of the Media Studies Graduate Program at CUNY Queens College, home to Team Human and the Laboratory for Digital Humanism. Hughes’s work explores media origins and portrayals of extremism. On today’s episode, Hughes begins by sharing his research on Arab Nationalism as related to media technologies from global broadcast to networked communications. Using his recent MA thesis as the springboard, Hughes and Rushkoff take a deep look at nationalist and extremist affinities that have surfaced both at home and abroad. How do hypertext, memes, and even magick fit into this story? Tune in to find out.Read Brian Hughes’s MA thesis linked in the abstract below and at queenscollege.media:“The 20th Century witnessed several opportunities to unify the Arab peoples as a political and identitarian bloc. None of these attempts, however, resulted in a lasting pan-Arab nationalism. Brian Hughes‘s thesis, Communications Technologies