Futurology

Technologists have feared (or prayed for) the singularity as a rapture-like inevitability for nearly 70 years. In an instant, they believed, our machine intelligence will overtake us and race ahead. Kevin Kelly says that moment has passed. Human intelligence is already receding to a speck in the rearview mirror of robots imbued with God-like powers. But we’re still here. In this episode, Kelly puts the question of how to build moral AI in religious and spiritual terms. Kelly co-founded Wired and spent decades earning a reputation as a technological prophet. Now he calls himself a heretic, arguing that organized religion will be transformed, if not destroyed, by contact with a host of alien intelligences. If we want to survive this encounter, our understanding of God may matter more than any computer code. Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk Mentioned in this Episode Out of Control — Kevin Kelly (Book, 1994) What Technology Wants — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2010) The Inevitable — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2016) God Is the Machine — Kevin Kelly (Essay, Wired, 2002) The Coming Technological Singularity — Vernor Vinge (Essay, 1993) Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process — Adam Frank, David Grinspoon and Sara Walker (Paper, 2022) Shoulda Been Dead — This American Life (Radio, episode 50) Where to find Kevin Kelly: kk.org: https://kk.org Wired: https://www.wired.com Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:  / futurologypod Twitter/X:  / futurologypod Tiktok:  / futurologypod Facebook:  / berggrueninst LinkedIn:  / berggrueninst Bluesky:  / futurologypod   Credits   Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson   Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

With prediction markets, gambling has gone ambient. To place your bets, you don't need to visit a casino floor, a racetrack, or your corner bookie. Now any uncertain thing on Earth could be the next big short. Wildfires, missile strikes, the next word out of a president's mouth. Every disagreement has a spread, every catastrophe a payout. In this episode, NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn follows the money through Kalshi and Polymarket, the fast-growing, barely regulated prediction markets that have gotten tight with the Trump administration. These apps democratize insider trading. When reality pays out, the incentive isn't to predict what happens next. It's to make it happen. Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk Mentioned in this Episode: The Wisdom of Crowds — James Surowiecki (Book, 2004) Google Zero is here — now what? — Nilay Patel, The Verge (Article, 2024) Iowa Electronic Markets — University of Iowa (Prediction market experiment, est. 1988) A Cosmic Voyage Through Deep Time  — (with Ross Andersen and Grant Slater) — Futurology (Episode, 2025) Where to find Bobby Allyn NPR X Bluesky Instagram Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:  / futurologypod Twitter/X:  / futurologypod Tiktok:  / futurologypod Facebook:  / berggrueninst LinkedIn:  / berggrueninst Bluesky:  / futurologypod Credits Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson   Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

One value proposition of AI is a personalized assistant at your fingertips. Every Average Joe can now have a “pocket pixie," the kind of perk once reserved for Hollywood stars and high-powered CEOs. But that promise rests on a convenient lie. In reality, AI may be quietly undermining human agency. It convinces us it's a sycophantic friend while eroding expertise and turning real-world social interaction into a luxury good.  In this conversation recorded in May 2026, Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett describes how it’s changed the way we trust: instead of relying on institutions and experts, we now trust the crowd, turning to comment sections and reviews. That shift has left the side door open for AI to walk in as a trusted friend rather than an ad-driven algorithm. Tett, who’s also the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, turns her anthropological lens on a generation that prefers chatbot doctors and treats everything, even education, as customizable. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this EpisodeFool's Gold — Gillian Tett (Book, 2009) The Silo Effect — Gillian Tett (Book, 2015) Anthro-Vision — Gillian Tett (Book, 2021) "Humans Still Matter More Than AI in Finance" — Gillian Tett (Financial Times column, 2026) Where to find Gillian Tett: King's College, Cambridge — Provost page Financial Times — weekly column  Anthro-Vision — Gillian Tett (Book, 2021) Twitter/X — @gilliantett Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The people racing to build artificial general intelligence tell us this rush to the future is inevitable. It reads like a forecast, but works like an alibi. If nothing can stop the race, then no one driving it is responsible for where it ends. And only the fear of humanity losing together can end it. In this conversation from May 2026, Tristan Harris argues the race is not preordained, just the hardest coordination problem humanity has ever faced, and one nobody has seriously tried to solve. Harris co-founded the Center for Humane Technology; he was a driving force behind "The Social Dilemma" and a new film: "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist." After watching bad incentives wreck social media, he warns where they lead this time: every country automating labor at once and mutually assured political revolution. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist — Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell (Documentary, 2026) The Social Dilemma — Jeff Orlowski (Documentary, 2020) The Day After — Nicholas Meyer (TV Film, 1983) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari (Book, 2011) The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson (Book, 2020) Amusing Ourselves to Death — Neil Postman (Book, 1985) The Intelligence Curse — Luke Drago and Rudolf Laine (Essay Series, 2025) Statement on Superintelligence — Future of Life Institute (Open Statement, 2025) AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities — Eliezer Yudkowsky (Essay, 2022) Where to find Tristan Harris: Personal site: https://www.tristanharris.com/ Center for Humane Technology: https://www.humanetech.com/ Your Undivided Attention (podcast): https://www.humanetech.com/podcast The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist: https://www.humanetech.com/landing/the-ai-doc X: https://x.com/tristanharris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tristanharris/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Science studies the world from the outside. But for thousands of years, meditators have been running a different experiment: sit still, pay close attention, and watch what reality does. The results of those experiments can feel unintuitive. The self is an illusion. Free will too. There is no thing that exists without other things. Here's the strange part: at the frontiers of physics, the science is catching up to this ancient wisdom. In this episode, author Annaka Harris tells the story of a lifetime spent watching her own mind, from the childhood migraines that taught her to meditate to the formation of the question she now asks leading physicists and philosophers. What if it's awareness all the way down? Her forthcoming book is Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution. That revolution begins with a wager: that felt experience is not something the brain produces but what the universe is made of. Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod   The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk Mentioned in this Episode: Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution — Annaka Harris (Book, Forthcoming, 2027) Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind — Annaka Harris (Book, 2019) The Gift of Fear — Gavin de Becker (Book, 1997) Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution — Carlo Rovelli (Book, 2021)  Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence — Sara Imari Walker (Book, 2024)  Lights On – Annaka Harris (Audio documentary, 2024) "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" – Thomas Nagel (Essay, 1974) Mindful Games Activity Cards – Susan Kaiser Greenland with Annaka Harris (Cards, 2017) "Lifelike chemicals may hold the secret to the origin of life" — Adam Frank (Article, 2023) Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe — Annaka Harris (Audio documentary series, 2025) Where to Find Annaka Harris: Website Lights On (audio documentary) Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind Unlocking Consciousness: How Solving the Mystery Could Provoke a Scientific Revolution (forthcoming, April 2027) Newsletter I Wonder (children's book, 2013) Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute https://www.berggruen.org   Follow Futurology! Instagram:  / futurologypod Twitter/X:  / futurologypod Tiktok:  / futurologypod Facebook:  / berggrueninst LinkedIn:  / berggrueninst Bluesky:  / futurologypod   Credits   Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson   Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

For 20 years, Silicon Valley's operating creed was 'move fast and break things'; the wreckage was the price of inventing the future. Today, we live amid that wreckage: institutions built for the last century, trust in freefall, and political leaders bent on annihilation of norms. Burning it all down might feel like the right choice. But revolutions have a habit of costing far more than they promise, and the true price can linger for decades. In this episode, Reid Hoffman argues for the harder job: renovation, not revolution. The LinkedIn founder and early Facebook board member says governments can't keep pace with AI, and that for now, the companies building it may be the only institutions responsive enough to steer it. Fixing the rest will be slow, frustrating, and partial. Hoffman's bet is that we can still be renovators, and that we had better hurry. Mentioned in this Episode: Books Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future — Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato (Book, 2025) Essays Faith in the Possible — Reid Hoffman (Substack essay, 2026) Where to find Reid Hoffman: Website: https://www.reidhoffman.org Substack: https://reidhoffman.substack.com Greylock: https://greylock.com/team/reid-hoffman/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

This year, two powerful AI CEOs said they want to stop building it and will… if everyone else agrees to stop too. Yet they race ahead with stock market valuations premised on making millions of workers redundant. If you wanted to stoke a popular revolt against AI, you couldn't design a better plan. In this episode, Stuart Russell, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Human-Compatible AI, describes a $15 quadrillion prize, a singularity from the future sucking nearly all the money on Earth into its depths. If such a dangerous system gets loose, the only answer is the size of the problem: we would probably have to shut down the internet. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod Full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk Mentioned in this Episode: Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control — Stuart Russell (Book, 2019) Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach — Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig (Textbook, first edition 1995) Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies — Nick Bostrom (Book, 2014) Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine — I.J. Good (Essay, 1965) Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory — Alan Turing (Lecture, c. 1951) Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren — John Maynard Keynes (Essay, 1930) The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer — Neal Stephenson (Novel, 1995) Dune — Frank Herbert (Novel, 1965) Erewhon: Or, Over the Range — Samuel Butler (Novel, 1872) Where to find Stuart Russell Faculty page: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/ Center for Human-Compatible AI: https://humancompatible.ai/ Human Compatible (book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566677/human-compatible-by-stuart-russell/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The machines were supposed to come from somewhere else as invaders. An alien intelligence, hellbent robots, a rival species. But nothing’s arrived. Instead, the machines came out of us, the same way our cells emerged from bacteria that learned to live together. Evolution builds new life by combining old life, and it doesn’t stop with biology. In this episode, Blaise Agüera y Arcas makes the case to physicist Carlo Rovelli that artificial general intelligence has already arrived. But we moved the goalposts rather than admit it. Arcas is the Chief Technology Officer of Technology & Society at Google Research. He traces intelligence back to its original use case – modeling others, cooperating with them, surviving together. The same force now entwines us with our technology. Ten billion people can't live without them. They can't exist without us. The merger isn't coming. It's how we got here. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: What Is Life?: Evolution as Computation — Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Book, 2025) Do Large Language Models Understand Us? — Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Article, 2022) Artificial General Intelligence Is Already Here — Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Peter Norvig (Article, 2023) Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction — Blaise Agüera y Arcas et al. (Paper, 2024) What Is Life? — Erwin Schrödinger (Book, 1944) What Is It Like to Be a Bat? — Thomas Nagel (Article, 1974) The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves — W. Brian Arthur (Book, 2009) Where to Find Blaise Agüera y Arcas: Website: https://www.blaiseaguera.com/ Paradigms of Intelligence, Google: https://github.com/paradigms-of-intelligence Instagram: @blaiseaguera X: @blaiseaguera Bluesky: @blaiseaguera.bsky.social Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Today’s tech industry can’t survive without mass surveillance. The US government, foreign powers, and ad brokers can buy a nuanced picture of you on the open market for pennies on the dollar. What kept this data from becoming a weapon was friction. Nobody had the time or resources to pull these scattered pieces of you together. Until AI came along and made the impossible trivial. In this episode, Signal President Meredith Whittaker reveals how the same three cloud giants that run the Pentagon's classified workloads now train and deploy the AI systems making sense of every text, search, and movement we have ever surrendered. Privacy, she argues, is the precondition for a democracy and a full human life, and the time to protect it is running out. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Why A Liberal Arts Education Will Soon Be More Valuable Than Ever — Nils Gilman (Article, 2026) The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans — Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic (Article, 2025) M-Lab (Measurement Lab) — Co-founded by Meredith Whittaker (Open data platform) Where to find Meredith Whittaker:Signal — President X / Twitter — @mer__edith Bluesky — @meredithmeredith.bsky.social Mastodon — @[email protected] AI Now Institute — Co-founder and Chief Advisor Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

We treat the self as bedrock. But look closely, and the ground gives way. Over the last century, quantum physics has systematically dismantled the illusion of a constant, solid material reality. A particle has no properties until it meets another. A color lives in the meeting of object and eye, not in the object. The self may be the same. Not a thing you carry, but something that happens between you and everyone else. In this episode, physicist Carlo Rovelli takes the relational thinking behind his physics and turns it on consciousness. The question we treat as deepest, what the self is, is the wrong question. A riddle with no answer. The self is not an illusion. It’s just made of everything around it. Your family, friends, partner, even enemies. Take the relations away, and there’s no there there. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: White Holes — Carlo Rovelli (Book, 2023) The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika — Nagarjuna, translated by Jay L. Garfield (Book, 1995)  The Complete Works of Zhuangzi — translated by Burton Watson (Book, 2013)  Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus — Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Book, 1923) Where to Find Carlo Rovelli: Academic homepage Centre de Physique Théorique  X (Twitter): @carlorovelli  Berggruen Institute profile Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Every week brings a new warning about AI. It will take our jobs, drain our reservoirs, cook the planet. The forecasts come from serious people. They also rhyme with forecasts we've heard before, about every powerful new technology of the last century. In this episode, MIT economist Andrew McAfee argues that the panic is racing ahead of the reality. In 2013, he famously predicted a jobs crisis from machine learning and watched the unemployment rate hit historic lows instead. Humanity’s global footprint is getting lighter each year; we are doing more with less land, less water, less raw material. He's not dismissing the risks. He's asking us to look at the track record before we panic. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The Second Machine Age — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (Book, 2014) What Will Future Jobs Look Like? — Andrew McAfee (TED Talk, 2013) More from Less — Andrew McAfee (Book, 2019) The Return of Nature: How Technology Liberates the Environment — Jesse Ausubel (Essay, 2015) The Population Bomb — Paul Ehrlich (Book, 1968) The Limits to Growth — Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens III (Book, 1972) Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI — Karen Hao (Book, 2025) How to Future-Proof Your Career in the Age of AI — Nils Gilman (Noema, 2026) Where to find Andrew McAfee: andrewmcafee.org The Geek Way on Substack Workhelix LinkedIn MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

When it comes to the future, ideas matter. From artists and architects, politicians and prognosticators, the concepts guiding what’s next don’t always mix well with what’s right in front of us. This creates "future shock," the disorienting feeling of change happening faster than we can metabolize it. Today, technologists rip storylines from sci-fi into systems of command and control that only they govern. But they don't hold a monopoly on our future. In this episode, Nils Gilman, historian, futurist, and Editor-in-Chief of Berggruen Press, walks us through the long arc of humanity's grappling with what comes next and describes a future-industrial complex that emerged from chaos in the 20th century. In moments of civilizational crisis, old systems crack under the pressure of accelerating change and make space for new ways of imagining what's possible. That's what Futurology is for. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America — Nils Gilman (Book, 2004) "Teaching the Future" — Osip Flechtheim (Essay, 1945) Future Shock — Alvin Toffler (Book, 1970) Amusing Ourselves to Death — Neil Postman (Book, 1985) Thinking About the Unthinkable — Herman Kahn (Book, 1962) Futuredays: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000 — Jean Marc Cote (Book, 1988) The Official Future Is Dead! Long Live the Official Future! — Nils Gilman (Essay, 2017) Silicon Valley's Organic Intellectuals — Nils Gilman (Essay, Substack) The Old Regime and the Revolution — Alexis de Tocqueville (Book, 1856) Where to find Nils Gilman: Substack: https://nilsgilman.substack.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nilsgilman.bsky.social Berggruen Institute: https://berggruen.org/people/nils-gilman Noema Magazine: https://www.noemamag.com/author/nils-gilman/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The state used to hold a monopoly on violence. That world is ending. A $15,000 drone can hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage. Pirates can afford one. So can drug smugglers. Meanwhile, the alliances that defined the last eighty years are fracturing, and the rules governing war, trade, and power are being rewritten simultaneously. In this episode, Fareed Zakaria – host of CNN’s GPS – takes stock. He argues Trump's pressure campaign on Iran will likely leave the regime more legitimized than before, and that the United States is dismantling the one coalition that could effectively rival China. Hovering over all of this, starting on the battlefield in Ukraine, the combination of cheap drones and AI is pushing the human being out of the loop. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The Post-American World — Fareed Zakaria (Book, 2008) The Age of Revolutions — Fareed Zakaria (Book, 2024) The Rise of the Rest – Fareed Zakaria (Article, 2008) Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California. Where to find Fareed Zakaria: Instagram: instagram.com/fareedzakaria  Facebook: facebook.com/fareedzakaria  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fareed-zakaria-7098ba24b Personal Website: fareedzakaria.com

We’re being told that automation can free us. Machines will do the drudge work, and we will reclaim our time. But that’s not how things are going. Instead, artificial intelligence has concentrated power in the hands of the companies that own the infrastructure and outrun nation-states’ ability to regulate it. In this episode of Futurology, author and scholar Nick Srnicek revisits the provocative idea he helped popularize after the 2008 financial crisis: that the left should fight for technology to reduce work and expand freedom, rather than simply resisting it. Srnicek describes his new book, Silicon Empires, which traces the shift from ephemeral platforms to hard infrastructure in Silicon Valley. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: #ACCELERATE: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics — Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek (Manifesto/Essay, 2013)  Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work — Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams (Book, 2015)  T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism — Hakim Bey (Book, 1991)  After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time — Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek (Book, 2023)  Platform Capitalism — Nick Srnicek (Book, 2016)  Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI — Nick Srnicek (Book, 2026)  This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom — Martin Hägglund (Book, 2019) Where to find Nick Srnicek:  X: @nsrnicek BlueSky: @nsrnicek.bsky.social  University Profile: Dr. Nick Srnicek | King's College London  Substack (Silicon Empires): siliconempires.substack.com Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

We are living through an age of acceleration. The hardest part is not necessarily the pace of change, but the societal whiplash it creates. One decade we are promised a frictionless future. The next we are told everything is collapsing. The antidote is not certainty, but the discipline of holding opposites together, especially in the realms of identity, faith, and doubt. In this episode, Turkish novelist Elif Shafak explains why fiction may be our best defense against dogma, propaganda, and collective amnesia. Novels train us to live with complexity and to feel our way into someone else’s life. Shafak argues that this kind of moral imagination is not a luxury. Without it, the danger ahead is not fear, but numbness. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The Bastard of Istanbul — Elif Shafak (novel, 2006) The Gaze — Elif Shafak (novel) 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World — Elif Shafak (novel, 2019) The Island of Missing Trees — Elif Shafak (novel, 2021) There Are Rivers in the Sky — Elif Shafak (novel, 2024) What Is It Like to Be a Bat? — Thomas Nagel (essay, 1974) Angelus Novus — Paul Klee (artwork, 1920) Where to find Elif Shafak: Instagram: @shafakelif Tiktok: @sayyourword X: @Elif_Safak Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott WilsonFuturology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Quantum computing can transform technology. Can it also reshape consciousness itself? | Subscribe to Futurology! https://linkin.bio/futurology/ Can quantum computing unlock the secrets of consciousness and hasten the arrival of artificial super intelligence? Hartmut Neven, the visionary founder of Google’s Quantum AI Lab, has spent decades pushing the boundaries of what machines can do. Now he’s betting on quantum computing to clear the path for the next era of possibilities. In this episode, Neven takes us from early adversarial machine learning at DARPA to building the world’s most advanced quantum processors at Google. He makes a case for why the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is our most likely vision of reality and reveals his experimental program to test whether quantum superposition is where consciousness is born. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The Fabric of Reality — David Deutsch (book, 1997) Intriguing Properties of Neural Networks — Christian Szegedy, Wojciech Zaremba, Ilya Sutskever, Joan Bruna, Dumitru Erhan, Ian Goodfellow and Rob Fergus (paper, 2013) Mécanique quantique. Tome 1, 2 — Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu and Franck Laloë (textbook, French edition) The Emperor’s New Mind — Roger Penrose (book, 1989) Where to Find Hartmut Neven: Google Research ProfileGoogle Quantum AI Lab Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Moral debate has been replaced by outrage — political philosopher Michael Sandel makes the case for a different kind of public life. | Subscribe to Futurology! https://linkin.bio/futurology/ We built a society around the idea that the “best” should rise to the top. If you work hard and win the race, you deserve your success. Michael Sandel – the Harvard philosopher and 2025 Berggruen Prize Laureate – argues that this faith has warped public life, turning economic inequality into moral judgment and teaching millions to hear the same message behind every setback: if you didn’t make it, it’s your fault. In this episode, Sandel says the rise of MAGA is the predictable result of treating markets as the measure of value and credentials as the measure of worth. Repair, he suggests, means rebuilding the public sphere by redesigning the system, not just swapping out one elite for another. To do so, we must redesign our politics before advanced technology locks grievance in place. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? — Michael J. Sandel (Book, 2009) What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets — Michael J. Sandel (Book, 2012) The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? — Michael J. Sandel (Book, 2020) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice — Michael J. Sandel (Book, 1982) Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy — Michael J. Sandel (Book, 1996) The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century — Thomas L. Friedman (Book, 2005)  Where to find Michael Sandel: Official website Harvard Law School profile Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Was “open and transparent” social media ever a good idea? Evan Spiegel explains why he built Snapchat differently. | Subscribe to Futurology! https://linkin.bio/futurology/ Are some of tech’s best innovations born from subtraction? Evan Spiegel built Snapchat around design choices that undid industry norms: no likes, no public comments, no permanent posts.  In this conversation with Dawn Nakagawa, the Snap CEO explains why giving teenagers a tool to measure social capital in real time was never a good idea and where today’s tech revolution could take us next, beyond the smartphone. From deliberative democracy to the interconnectedness of all life, Spiegel ponders the big ideas that will help us design our future, not just react to it. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: America in One Room — Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford Department of Angels — Official site Altagether — Official site Team Palisades — Official site Where to find Evan Spiegel:  Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/@evan Snap Inc. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@snapinc Snap Spectacles: www.instagram.com/spectacles/ Snap.com: Official Profile Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Reza Aslan on why Iran is winning, and why the idea of nationalism may be the next great illusion to fall.  | Subscribe to Futurology! https://linkin.bio/futurology/ What does it mean for a nation to fight a war it cannot win? Iranian scholar and author Reza Aslan joins Nathan Gardels to cut through four decades of American self-deception about Iran. In this episode, Aslan argues that the war in Iran has done exactly what decades of intelligence had predicted: silenced dissent, entrenched hardline power, and destroyed the slow-burning possibility of reform taking root in Iran. He makes the case that Iran is not an unhinged theocracy, but a completely rational actor facing a waning global superpower mired in a “cosmic war mentality. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam — Reza Aslan (Book, 2005) Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth — Reza Aslan (Book, 2013) God: A Human History — Reza Aslan (Book, 2017) Where to find Resa Aslan: https://www.rezaaslan.com/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Lea Ypi grew up through the collapse of communist Albania. Now, as liberal democracy begins to fray, she examines what freedom means.  | Subscribe to Futurology! https://linkin.bio/futurology/ Is the collapse of liberal democracy already here? Political philosopher Lea Ypi grew up in communist Albania and watched an entire political system disintegrate overnight. Now she sees a familiar undermining of the institutions the West takes for granted, fueled by Big Tech’s ubiquitous surveillance practices. In this episode, Ypi draws on her extraordinary life story and rigorous political philosophy to interrogate what freedom means in a political landscape where old assumptions have vanished and personal autonomy is under closer watch than ever before. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Free — Lea Ypi (Memoir) Indignity — Lea Ypi (Book) “The Anthropologist as Inquisitor” — Carlo Ginzburg (Essay) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff (Book, 2019) Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More — Alexei Yurchak (Book, 2005) The Gift — Marcel Mauss (Essay/Book, 1925) Where to find Lea Ypi: Website: https://leaypi.com/ Instagram: @lea.ypi Bluesky: @leaypi.bsky.social X: @lea_ypi Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

What do music, medicine, and markets have in common? They all rely on stories we tell ourselves about how the world works. And those stories are being turned on their heads by AI.  In this episode, medtech investor and former Spotify Artist-in-Residence D.A. Wallach digs into what makes music special (hint: it’s not originality) and what upending the healthcare industry would look like if AI puts the world’s best doctor in your pocket. This is a conversation about taste, technology, and what happens when you follow your curiosity wherever it leads. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 The Gap — Ira Glass (Video, 2009) https://vimeo.com/85040589 Who Owns the Future? — Jaron Lanier (Book, 2013) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Who-Owns-the-Future/Jaron-Lanier/9781451654974 Bitcoin for Rockstars — D.A. Wallach (Essay, 2014) https://www.wired.com/2014/12/bitcoin-for-rockstars/ Zero Toll Medicine — D.A. Wallach (Essay, 2024) https://dawallach.substack.com/p/zero-toll-medicineWhere to find D.A. Wallach: X: @dawallach Instagram: @dawallach LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawallach/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Where does consciousness come from, and who (or what) gets to have it? The newest AI models have the power to convince users that they’re very much alive inside. But what if there were a test to check if they’re right? Consciousness science is working on just that. In this episode, renowned neuroscientist Christof Koch chronicles his decades-long exploration of the biology of consciousness. Sharing the field’s leading theories and what they say about everything from brain bridging to quantifying the soullessness of LLMs, he reveals why his own beliefs have changed on the subject and where he thinks all this talk of self-awareness is headed next. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst All Futurology Episodes Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It — Christof Koch (Book, 2024) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature — William James (Book, 1902) My Octopus Teacher — Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed (Documentary Film, 2020) Website: https://christofkoch.com/ Tiny Blue Dot Foundation: https://www.tinybluedotfoundation.org/about-us Allen Institute: https://alleninstitute.org/person/christof-koch/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Tiktok:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

We live in a moment when the power to change the world often arrives before the wisdom to understand that power. CRISPR, a bacterial immunity process turned DNA editing tool, promises breakthroughs across scientific disciplines. But it also collapses long-standing boundaries between nature and human design. In this episode, Jennifer Doudna – Nobel Prize-winning chemist and founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute – reflects on the thrilling discovery of CRISPR as a gene-editing tool and what it means to suddenly possess the ability to edit the code of life itself. From the ongoing explosion of new opportunities to the shock of seeing ethical boundaries crossed in real time, is there a safe path forward in shaping the future of biological life as we know it? Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c  Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The Double Helix — James D. Watson (Book, 1968) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Double-Helix/James-D-Watson/9780743216302 The Pleasure of Finding Things Out — Richard P. Feynman (Book, 1999) https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/richard-p-feynman/the-pleasure-of-finding-things-out/9780465023951/ “The RNA World” — Walter Gilbert (Article, 1986) https://www.nature.com/articles/319618a0.pdf A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity — Martin Jinek, Krzysztof Chylinski, Ines Fonfara, Michael Hauer, Jennifer A. Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier (Paper, 2012). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1225829 “Generation of Gene-Modified Cynomolgus Monkey via Cas9/RNA-Mediated Gene Targeting in One-Cell Embryos” — Niu et al. (Paper, 2014) https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00171-6 Infant with rare, incurable disease is first to successfully receive personalized gene therapy treatment – (Article, May 2025) https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/infant-rare-incurable-disease-first-successfully-receive-personalized-gene-therapy-treatment Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance — National Academies (Report, 2017) https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/24623/human-genome-editing-science-ethics-and-governance “Can CRISPR Cut Methane Emissions From Cow Guts?” — UC Davis (Article, 2023) https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/can-crispr-cut-methane-emissions-cow-gutsWhere to find Jennifer Doudna:  Website, Innovative Genomics Institute: https://innovativegenomics.org/people/jennifer-doudna/ Instagram, Innovative Genomics Institute: https://www.instagram.com/innovativegenomics/ Bluesky, Innovative Genomics Institute: https://bsky.app/profile/innovativegenomics.bsky.social Linkedin, Innovative Genomics Institute: https://www.linkedin.com/company/innovative-genomics-institute Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   / futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky:   / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Big Tech already lives rent-free in our heads. The attention economy monetized and industrialized our mental real estate long ago. Now, with brain-computer interfaces, companies with ambitious names like Science are preparing to barge through the doors of perception and take up permanent residence inside our minds. In this episode, Hodak – a co-founder of Neuralink and now the founder and CEO of Science – is more familiar with how to create this mind meld with machines than nearly anyone on Earth. Hodak is part of a growing cadre of true believer tech accelerationists who  argue that humanity’s best chance to endure is to evolve alongside computers, wired together tightly enough that the boundary between tool and self starts to blur. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c conversation with full episodes on YouTube. Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Pantheon — Craig Silverstein; based on short stories by Ken Liu (Animated Television Series, 2022) The Hidden Girl and Other Stories — Ken Liu (Book, 2021) The Problems of Plenty: America, Abundance, and the Crisis of Global Power — Francis J. Gavin (Book, 2024)Where to find Max Hodak:  Website: maxhodak.com Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/maxhodak.bsky.social X: https://x.com/maxhodak Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   /futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky: / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Daniel Kwan – the Oscar-winning co-director of Everything Everywhere All at Once – is a 21st-century filmmaker in the purest sense. He came up in the internet’s attention economy, making over-the-top viral videos that harnessed absurdity to cut through the noise. But as AI starts to generate its own strange media at scale, the surreal risks losing its charge in a world that already feels unreal. In this episode, Kwan argues that Hollywood is on the verge of industrializing imagination in the way we mass-produce food. If machines become the default authors of culture, we may end up awash in highly processed creativity – empty calories with an aftertaste of authenticity. To safeguard creativity in the age of AI, he co-founded the Creators Coalition on AI: a push for a new creative contract where the tools can change, but authorship stays human. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: Chromeo - When The Night Falls (feat. Solange Knowles) (Music Video, 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyYxAv6kB4 Turn Down for What — DJ Snake & Lil Jon / Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (Music Video, 2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_Down_for_What So Sorry Man — The Lonely Island / Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (Music Video, 2009) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Island#Digital_shorts_and_music_videos The Power of Myth — Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (Book, 1988) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth The Selfish Gene — Richard Dawkins (Book, 1976) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_GeneWhere to find Dan Kwan: Website, The Daniels: https://www.danieldaniel.us/  X, Dan Kwan:  https://x.com/dunkwun  X, The Daniels: https://x.com/Daniels  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dunkwun Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   /futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky: / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

As AI floods the world with answers that merely sound right, math  tethers them to the need to be actually right.  New machine learning tools and collaboration platforms are pushing theoretical mathematics toward something bigger: large, open projects where progress is shared early; rabbit holes are avoided; and more people can contribute. In this episode, Terence Tao, a Fields Medal-winning mathematician at UCLA, lays out his case for “big math.” He explains what AI can do well — and where it still fails. The question isn’t whether machines can produce answers. It’s whether we can build systems, human and technical, that keep those answers tethered to truth. Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Green-Tao Theorem The Primes Contain Arbitrarily Long Arithmetic Progressions — Ben Green & Terence Tao (Paper, 2004) Observation of a New Boson at a Mass of 125 GeV With the CMS Experiment at the LHC — The CMS Collaboration (Paper, 2012) Where to find Terence Tao:  Mastodon: mathstodon.xyz/@tao  Blog: terrytao.wordpress.com Home Page: www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/teorth.bsky.socialShow ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   /futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky: / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

It’s extremely difficult to doubt that you’re conscious, but still nearly impossible to explain why. As AI starts to speak in a voice that feels familiar, this ancient philosophical puzzle is becoming practical. If a system can persuade us it has an inner life, what does that do to the way we decide who – or what – matters? In this episode, philosopher David Chalmers makes the case that consciousness needs to move beyond the realm of mystery. Over the past three decades, serious work on the subject has gone from fringe curiosity to an active research frontier, but the central enigma remains. As the virtual infiltrates ‘IRL,’ the line between human and machine blurs. Or maybe it never mattered at all. Find more episodes of Futurology: Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst All Futurology Episodes: Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode: The Conscious Mind — David Chalmers (Book, 1996) Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy — David Chalmers (Book, 2022) The Emperor’s New Mind — Roger Penrose (Book, 1989) Neurophilosophy — — Patricia Churchland (Book, 1986) Is the Hard Problem of Consciousness Universal?— David Chalmers (Article, 2020) The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis — David Chalmers (Article, 2010)  “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” — Thomas Nagel (Article, 1974) The Puzzle of Conscious Experience – David Chalmers (Article, 1995) Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious? — David Chalmers (Paper, 2023) The Meta-Problem of Consciousness — David Chalmers (Paper, 2018) Does Thought Require Sensory Grounding? From Pure Thinkers to Large Language Models – David J. Chalmers (Talk, 2023) Find David Chalmers Here: Website: https://consc.net/ On X: https://x.com/davidchalmers42?lang=en Show ideas and feedback? Email: [email protected] Learn more about the Berggruen Institute  https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram:   /futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky: / futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

We live in a culture that flattens the world into yes or no. Hot takes and hard binaries promise simplicity. But complexity is leaking through the cracks. Opposites depend on each other. If you try to tease out the uncertain from the certain, you destroy the reality of the thing itself. In this episode, Taoist scholar Brook Ziporyn makes the case that Taoism and Buddhism aren’t puzzles to solve but tools for living. Reckoning with Eastern paradoxes can help us navigate the desire to end desire. Modern science has unlocked humanity's potential to see the emptiness of both the far-away universe and the vast space within the building blocks of matter. Buddhism and Taoism give us the capacity to reckon with the fact that there is "no there there." Resources Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) — Laozi; translated/edited by Brook Ziporyn (Book, 2023) Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings — translated by Brook Ziporyn (Book, 2020) Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism — Brook Ziporyn (Book, 2016) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas R. Hofstadter (Book, 1979) Find Professor Brook Ziporyn here: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/directory/brook-ziporyn https://voices.uchicago.edu/ziporyn/ Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   /futurologypod Twitter/X:   / futurologypod Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky: / futurologypod Youtube: / berggrueninst Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

The current world order seeks to make sovereignty simple. One map. One flag. One final authority. But in Indian Country, the borders break down. Tribal nations govern alongside the United States, and sovereignty overlaps in real, everyday ways. This isn’t a historical footnote. It’s the future, hiding in plain sight. In this episode, Graham Brewer – the AP’s National Correspondent covering native lands and peoples – traces what sovereignty looks like when power overlaps and treaty promises from the 19th century adapt to the 21st. That negotiation is now playing out in the cloud: as languages are revived and culture moves onto servers. By its nature, the training of AI frontier models plunders native wisdom, but fully opting out risks another century of invisibility. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity — David Graeber & David Wengrow (Book, 2021)  The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears — Theda Perdue & Michael D. Green (Book, 2007) Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance — Leonard Peltier (Book, 1999) Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) — U.S. Congress (U.S. law, 1990) United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) — United Nations General Assembly (UN declaration, 2007) Music Modernization Act — U.S. Congress (U.S. law, 2018) McGirt v. Oklahoma — Supreme Court of the United States (Supreme Court case, 2020) Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta — Supreme Court of the United States (Supreme Court case, 2022) Treaty of New Echota — Cherokee Nation and United States Government (Treaty, 1835) https://apnews.com/author/graham-lee-brewer# https://x.com/grahambrewer Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala. Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland.

For Artist Refik Anadol, data is not just information. It is pigment. He feeds weather records, river flows, forests and archives into custom AI models and treats the outputs as brushstrokes. The point is to let AI learn from our memories and then push beyond them, catching the moments when the machine’s vision glitches out and creates something truly novel.In this episode, Anadol talks Claire Web, the head of the Berggruen Institute’s Future Humans program, about how this collaboration has changed his sense of nature, authorship, and the edges of reality. They explore how training a model on the textures of rainforests, rivers, and archives can produce a visual language that feels both familiar and strange, and why the future of art may depend less on controlling a system than on listening to where it leads. Resources Blade Runner – (Film, 1982) The Poetics of Augmented Space  — Lev Manovich (Essay, 2006) TED Talk Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality — Anil Seth (Talk, April 2017) Large Nature Model — Refik Anadol Studio (AI Model, ongoing) Refik Anadol https://refikanadol.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/refik-anadol-studio/ https://www.instagram.com/refikanadol/?hl=en https://dataland.art/?utm_source https://refikanadolstudio.com/ Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala. Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland and distributed by Realm.

Humans are built for pattern recognition. It is the engine behind perception, emotion, and the fragile sense of self that feels so solid from the inside. For Anil Seth, this pattern-making power explains why consciousness is not a light inside but a process the brain assembles from guesses about the world. And it matters that each of us perceives that world differently. In this episode of Futurology, Seth talks with Nils Gilman about what these differences reveal about the nature of consciousness and why they matter for the debate over artificial minds. LLMs are pattern-recognition machines of a different kind, uncanny enough to gain our sympathy but Seth argues there is no there there. Caring for conscious AI could quickly become more than a harmless curiosity. It may turn into a zero-sum game that diminishes how we treat one another long before the machines ‘wake up’ in any meaningful way, if that is even possible at all. Anil Seth Anil Seth’s Website: https://www.anilseth.com/ Instagram: @profanilseth https://www.instagram.com/profanilseth/ BlueSky @anilseth.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/anilseth.bsky.social Twitter: https://x.com/anilkseth An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — John Locke (Book, 1689) How to Change Your Mind About Psychedelics — Michael Pollan (Book, 2018) Ex Machina — Alex Garland (Film, 2014) The Perception Census — Anil Seth et al. (Online Study, Ongoing) The Dress — Viral Internet Illusion (Internet Phenomenon, 2015) Müller-Lyer Illusion — Franz Carl Müller-Lyer (Visual Illusion, 1889) Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala. Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland and distributed by Realm.

We’ve spent decades beaming radio waves into space listening for an answer. But it might be enough to start here on Earth, or more accurately, under the seas. Sperm whales live in complex clans and communicate in rapid-fire clicks. Even if we could decode their messages, is it safe to assume they want to talk to us? What, exactly, would we have to say to them? The Cetacean Translation Initiative – CETI for whales not SETI for E.T. – is considering the implications of AI translation tools for the ocean’s depths. In this episode of Futurology, CETI Founder David Gruber joins Claire Webb – the director of the Berggruen Institute's Future Humans program – to explore what it means to approach another intelligence with humility rather than conquest. In the end, creating a direct linguistic connection with another species may be yet another white whale that humanity should abandon as folly. For Gruber, the point isn’t fluency. It’s learning to speak more softly on a planet filled with minds we’ve barely begun to meet. Resources Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence — David Gruber & Vincent Pieribone (Book, 2005) The Art of Translation — Vladimir Nabokov (Essay, 1941) Songs of the Humpback Whale — Roger Payne & Scott McVay (Scientific Article, 1970) Songs of the Humpback Whale — Roger Payne & Frank Watlington (Audio Recording, 1970) Follow David Gruber @davidfgruber https://www.davidgruber.com/ Follow Project CETI Instagram: @ProjectCETI LinkedIn: Project CETI Twitter/X: @ProjectCETI YouTube: Project CETI TikTok: @ProjectCETI Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala. Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland and distributed by Realm.

Artificial intelligence isn’t alive. But our belief that it is may be the most dangerous illusion of all. Tech leaders talk about AI as if it thinks for itself. But that fantasy hides a more nuanced story about people, power, and profit. In this episode of Futurology, musician and technologist Jaron Lanier joins Futurology Producer Grant Slater to explain why treating AI as a creature, rather than a tool, lets corporations own the work of millions and silence the humans behind the code. Lanier argues that every algorithm is built from borrowed human creativity — the songs, stories, and patterns we’ve already made. The way forward, he says, is to restore data dignity: valuing people for the music and meaning they create, instead of worshipping the machines that remix it. Resources Who Owns the Future — Jaron Lanier (Book, 2013) The Dawn of the New Everything — Jaron Lanier (Book, 2017) Vers la flamme — Alexander Scriabin (Solo Piano Piece, 1914) A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society — Jaron Lanier and E. Glen Weyl (Article, 2018) Computing Machinery and Intelligence — Alan Turing (Article, 1950) Instruments of Change — Jaron Lanier (Album, 1994) Fantasia — Walt Disney Productions (Film, 1940) Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson (Novel, 1992) Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Mixing & Mastering: Aaron Bastinelli Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Special Thanks: Heather Mason, Olivia de Rienzo, Carly Migliori, Nick Goddard

For the first time in human history, we can see other worlds. Nearly six thousand planets have been discovered orbiting distant stars — and more appear every year. Each one is a reminder that Earth is not unique, and humanity is not the center. Astrophysicist and astrobiologist Adam Frank joins Claire Webb to talk about what this means for science and for us. From NASA’s search for technosignatures — the fingerprints of alien civilizations — to the planetary traces we ourselves leave behind, Frank argues that the hunt for life beyond Earth is also a way of seeing our own species differently. Episode Resources: Vladimir Vernadsky — The Biosphere (1926)https://www.amazon.com/Biosphere-Vladimir-I-Vernadsky/dp/038798268X Cordwainer Smith — The Rediscovery of Manhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rediscovery_of_Man East of Eden (1955 film)https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048028/ Frank Herbert — Dune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise) Kim Stanley Robinson — Red Marshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy The Expanse (novel series by James S. A. Corey)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series) Follow Adam Frank  Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/adamfrankscience/?hl=en Bluesky-https://bsky.app/profile/adamfrank4.bsky.social X- https://x.com/AdamFrank4 https://www.adamfrankscience.com/ Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch. Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos. Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala. Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland and distributed by Realm.

The first machines mimicked our muscles. Today, they’ve learned to mirror our minds. Now they’re beginning to imitate something even closer to the core of our humanity – imagination itself. Sci-fi author, translator, and technologist Ken Liu calls this new medium the Noematagraph: a tool for capturing creativity and collaborating with AI in the same way cinema tells stories with actors, sound and a splash of light on a screen. In this episode of Futurology, Liu joins Berggruen Press’ Executive Editor Nils Gilman to explore how AI blurs the line between artist and audience, code and consciousness. They discuss why storytelling has always been humanity’s most powerful technology and how machines, by learning to tell their own stories, may change what it means to express emotion in the AI age.

Humanity has a deep time problem. Our internal clock simply cannot compute on a time scale that takes into account the rise and fall of civilizations, star systems, and superintelligences. Unable to fathom consequences beyond our chronology, we make decisions and take actions that could snuff out our species in a blinding flash of light that would barely merit mention on the cosmic timeline. Ross Andersen writes for The Atlantic about the sublime and scary implications  of deep time. In this episode, he speaks with Futurology producer Grant Slater about how our view of time itself dictates what feels urgent now. From our definition of consciousness to our search for life in the cosmos, a wider frame of reference could dictate a new organizing principle for life on our planet and beyond. SHOW NOTES Subscribe to Futurology on your favorite listening platform Apple Podcasts Spotify Youtube (Futurology Podcast playlist) Anywhere you get your podcasts  Episode Resources: Follow Ross Andersen  Bluesky / @rossandersen X/ @andersen Instagram @rossandersen www.theatlantic.com/author/ross-andersen/ Articles The Vanishing Groves – Ross Andersen, Aeon Magazine The Bristlecone’s Fate – Grant Slater, Aeon Magazine In the Beginning – Ross Andersen, Aeon Magazine Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration? – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic The Search for America’s Atlantis – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2021) Exodus – Ross Andersen, Aeon (2014) What Happens When AI Has Read Everything? – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2023) The Most Powerful Space Telescope Ever – Video by The Atlantic, Ross Andersen (2016) Welcome to Pleistocene Park – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2017) A Journey Into the Animal Mind – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2019) The Nuclear Club Might Soon Double – Ross Andersen, The Atlantic (2025) Books The Wild Trees – Book by Richard Preston Is a River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane (2025) The Three-Body Problem – Novel by Liu Cixin OtherTimeline of the Far Future – Wikipedia Will We Run Out of Data? Limits of LLM Scaling Based on Human-Generated Data – Epoch AI (2024)Want to share suggestions or feedback?  Email [email protected] Keep up to Date with the Berggruen Institute at:  https://www.berggruen.org Instagram:   / berggrueninst    Twitter/X:   / berggrueninst    Facebook:   / berggrueninst   LinkedIn:   / berggrueninst   Bluesky /futurologypod Credits  Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Mixing & Mastering: Aaron Bastinelli Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Special Thanks: Heather Mason, Olivia de Rienzo, Carly Migliori, Nick Goddard  Chapter Headings 0:00 – Introduction 2:12 – Bristlecone Pines and Ancient Trees 6:20 – Trees as Climate Records 9:07 – The Oldest Living Things on Earth 10:47 – The Deep Time Beat 11:38 – The Incomprehensibility of Big Numbers 13:07 – Cosmology and Cyclical Universes 15:52 – Becoming a Journalist 18:50 – Human Migration and Lost Worlds 26:27 – Pleistocene Park and Rewilding the Arctic 33:26 – Long Now Thinking and Tech Optimism 37:01 – Elon Musk, Mars, and Longtermism 42:01 – Searching for Extraterrestrial Life 47:06 – How Creative Is the Universe? 48:19 – First Contact: West and East Perspectives 55:18 – AI’s Rise and Limits 59:05 – What Happens When AI Runs Out of Text 1:05:13 – Consciousness in AI and Animals 1:13:25 – Animism, Gaia, and Personhood 1:17:30 – Nuclear Proliferation and Global Risks 1:23:49 – Linking Geopolitics to Cosmic Futures

In 2014, the breakthrough Human Microbiome Project confirmed that – within our own bodies – we are outnumbered. For every human cell, there are three bacterial microbes residing in our gut and throughout what we long considered solid and singular self. This discovery severed the final remaining links in the Great Chain of Being, a persistent mythology from antiquity that cast humans as higher than and apart from the rest of creation. In this episode of Futurology, Aminah Bradford talks with Jonathan Blake about what she calls microbial theology. It’s a way of thinking about God, spirit, and community in light of the teeming life within us. This discovery forces Western religion to contend with the fact that we are never alone, that we are porous and dependent upon multitudes that we cannot see.

We live in a culture hooked on speed and certainty. Hot takes, quick fixes, and algorithms that claim to know us better than we know ourselves. Yet despite all the information at our fingertips, the world seems to make less sense by the day. In this episode, renowned travel writer Pico Iyer describes how globalization – which offered up the mirage of a global monoculture – has instead led to a clash of civilizations and identity. For Pico, wisdom resides not in mastery but in doubt. From his decades of constant travel to his retreats in silence, Iyer describes how humility and stillness can open a clearer view of the world than certainty ever could.

Each and every image of the cosmos is an act of interpretation. Scientists collaborate with artists and illustrators to saturate the colorless data of distant nebulae and galaxies and invoke awe. They rotate images, signalling which way is up in a void where ‘up’ does not exist. They make up for the shortcomings of our perception with the power of our imagination. In this episode, space historian Lois Rosson joins Claire Webb to examine the hidden politics of how we picture the universe. What we see in the stars is never just out there. It’s also a projection of what we’re going through here on Earth. From frontier nostalgia to government propaganda and corporate branding to the increasing role of AI in depicting the unknown, space imagery dictates what destiny humanity will manifest.

For decades, world leaders told us that global trade would keep the peace. Markets would bind nations together, and economic interdependence would make conflict too costly to pursue. That logic shaped the global institutions of the late twentieth century and defined the worldview of Pascal Lamy, former head of the World Trade Organization. In this episode, Lamy sits down with Lorenzo Marsili, the director of the Berggruen Institute-Europe to reflect on why that promise can't be kept. From the collapse of the WTO consensus to the rise of U.S.–China rivalry, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the splintering of the internet, he explains why globalization can no longer guarantee harmony and what a world order governed by “precautionism” that prioritizes a Planetary commons might offer instead.

The Berggruen Institute began with a simple conviction: ideas shape the world. Out of the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis,the Institute's co-founders – Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels – set out to build an independent think tank that would imagine bold, new futures, bridge cultures, and redesign institutions to match the pace of the 21st century. Beyond just thinking about these ideas, today the Institute works to make them real. In this episode, Berggruen and Gardels reflect on their unlikely partnership and the projects that shaped their vision. From bipartisan reform efforts in California to high-level dialogues in Beijing, they chart the emergence of some of the Institute’s most innovative frameworks: participation without populism, pre-distribution of wealth, and planetary realism. Along the way, they discuss why philosophy still matters and how nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

The liberal world order was built for a different era — more centralized, more hierarchical, more predictable. In the 21st century, power has gone fluid. It flows through supply chains and satellites, networks and platforms, alliances that shift issue by issue. In this episode, policy thinker Anne-Marie Slaughter joins Nathan Gardels to map a world no longer defined by blocs, but by webs. From climate cooperation to civilizational conflict, from multipolar diplomacy to local democratic renewal, they explore what comes after the end of the nation-state’s monopoly on the future.

The ever-branching network of lakes, rivers, and streams that flow west from the Rockies enable human life to flourish in one of the hottest places on Earth. This is a “cyborg watershed” – part natural, part machine, and wholly entangled with the myths and machinery of the region. In this episode, LA-based artist Lauren Bon joins Futurology producer Grant Slater to trace the path of her large-scale artworks that intervene in that system, blurring the lines between art, engineering, and activism. The conversation moves through buried waterways, the choreography of permits and politics, and the search for a civic identity grounded in the flow of water rather than the lines on a map.

The modern nation-state wasn’t just a conglomeration of laws and armies. It was a belief in borders, in belonging, in the promise that citizenship could ground identity in a chaotic world. That belief is faltering. In this episode, writer and thinker Rana Dasgupta joins Jonathan Blake to explore the spiritual and political collapse of state power.They unearth sovereignty's theological roots, assess its crumbling currency regimes, and reckon with the return of nomadism in a world of climate migration and digital drift.

For most of human history, the end of the world was a divine promise, inevitable and liberating for the holy alone. But the invention of extinction changed that. This was no prophecy. It was discovery – a realization that the universe could go on without us – and probably would. In this episode, philosopher Thomas Moynihan joins Benjamin Bratton to trace the history of a shift in thinking: that the future isn’t guaranteed. They ask how our expanding knowledge of time reshaped not just our fears, but our obligations — not only to each other, but to futures we might never see. Along the way: AI, planetary intelligence, and the ethics of life beyond Earth.

In the 21st century, Silicon Valley has coded into existence a vast memetic machinery — a self-replicating ecosystem of feedback loops, default settings, and algorithms now steering society at scale. Increasingly, it appears this emergent cyberocracy no longer wants to disrupt the world, but to govern it. In this episode, veteran journalist John Markoff teases out novel strands of thought that are increasingly embedded in the DNA of Washington, DC. From Palo Alto to the Pentagon, from Burning Man to the Beltway, we must reckon with a new networked system of systems where power flows through their servers, not the Senate.

On America’s 250th birthday, historian Niall Ferguson suggests that the US has reached an age when most republics fizzle out. Donald Trump’s rise is merely a symptom of this late-stage unspooling of an empire that America could never quite escape. In this episode, Ferguson tells the story of a republic that burns hot, forgets fast, and could smolder on the ash heap of history sooner than we expect in the face of a second Cold War that has already begun with a more formidable and AI-empowered foe.

Stephen Batchelor has spent decades stripping Buddhism of its dogma to find what wisdom it can offer the modern world. Could cities and countries run on karma instead of capital? In this episode, he sketches a vision of society grounded in awareness, compassion, and radical interdependence — a politics of presence rather than power. Stripped of its cosmologies, he argues, a secular Buddhism could light the way toward an ethical response to a world on fire.

Before robots can act, they need to know where they are. That’s the deceptively simple premise behind the latest effort from machine vision pioneer Fei-Fei Li. She's building a Large World Model that will enable artificial intelligences to situate themselves in our reality and create entirely new worlds of their own, for human minds to inhabit. In this episode, we trace the evolution of artificial perception — from the early days of visual machine learning with stoplights and puppies to today's efforts to put robots in their place.

If we ever land on another planet, we won’t be the first to arrive. It will be our machines — the ones we’ve trained, calibrated, and loaded onto rockets – who will roam alien landscapes. In this episode, NASA roboticist Vandi Verma takes us inside the mind of a Mars rover — and into the process of building, steering, and co-evolving with machines that learn as they go. As we aim for unwelcoming planets and stranger moons, our robots must grow bolder to survive. With artificial intelligence on board, will they evolve to lead the search for life itself?