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 Albert Camus, Spinoza, and Martin Buber — and even recent statements from the Pope — Rushkoff argues that true moral action isn't calculated in hypothetical future outcomes, but lived out right now in local, face-to-face human connection.

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

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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 Team Human, Douglas Rushkoff sits down with artist, activist, and geographer Trevor Paglen to discuss his groundbreaking new book, How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI.

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

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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 the intelligence of mycelial networks to practical strategies for becoming "indigestible" and completely useless to AI, Strand offers a somatic framework for navigating civilizational crisis.

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

🤝 Team Human is proudly supported by Groucho. You can take 50% off your first month by using promo code "teamhuman": https://mygroucho.club/teamhuman

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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 explores the stark contrast between human connection and authoritarian propaganda.

He dives deep into why social Darwinism completely misunderstands the natural world, how nature actually favors cooperation, and why treating life like a prison yard game makes us all weaker.

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

🤝 Team Human is proudly supported by Groucho. You can take 50% off your first month by using promo code "teamhuman": https://mygroucho.club/teamhuman

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"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 limits - and the constraints of Dunbar’s Number - are colliding with a collapsing Holocene and modern corporate media systems designed to abstract us from reality.

From Leonardo DiCaprio's ad-libbed line that broke the crew on the set of "Don’t Look Up" to a clear-eyed diagnosis of the macro "Hail Mary" phase of climate adaptation, Rushkoff and McKay chart a path through doomerism. Together, they argue that surviving a post-Holocene world requires breaking the digital illusion, reclaiming pro-social local networks, and finding the holy act of mutual connection on the deck of the Titanic.

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

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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 energies, Horowitz brings a hammer to premature consolation. Is the dictate to accept the things you cannot change keeping you trapped in a mechanical, flattened existence?

Horowitz argues we possess more agency over our realities than therapeutic culture wants us to believe. By exploring applied Nietzscheanism, the true mechanics of Left-Hand Path magic, and the urgent necessity of cutting cruel people out of our lives, this conversation challenges you to strip away performative love and light and reclaim your childhood wishes.

Order Esoterika: https://www.amazon.com/Esoterika-Formulas-Against-False-Self/dp/1722507624/

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

🤝 Team Human is proudly supported by Groucho. You can take 50% off your first month by using promo code "teamhuman": https://mygroucho.club/teamhuman

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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 development, Douglas and Reed compare notes on what they thought the internet would become - and what it actually grew into.

✨ Learn more about Reed’s work: http://www.curiouserinstitute.com

🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

🤝 Team Human is proudly supported by Groucho. You can take 50% off your first month by using promo code "teamhuman": https://mygroucho.club/teamhuman

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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 consciousness to a server. True vitality comes from our capacity to affect and be affected by others: to flow with the universe’s infinite chain, accept our temporary nature, and find the others to dance with.

🌍 Support Team Human to keep us independent, gain ad-free access to the show, exclusive livestreams with Rushkoff, live events, and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

🤝 Team Human is proudly supported by Groucho. You can take 50% off your first month by using promo code "teamhuman": https://mygroucho.club/teamhuman

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