The Jewish futurism Lab

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth sits down with therapist Shely Rachel Esses, LMFT, to explore the psychology of the future self and what it takes to imagine a life beyond survival mode. Shely brings together clinical psychology, nervous system science, embodied healing, and Jewish spiritual wisdom to show how […]

Mike Wirth talks with Israeli realist painter Avraham “Avi” Vofsi about classical oil painting, Jewish identity, and his AI assisted Theodor Herzl project. They explore how to use new tools without losing the human aura, and what Jewish images might look like in the future. Check out Avi’s beautiful artwork on his website and follow […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth shares the story behind a UX‑driven case study in Jewish ritual. Mike talks about creating the High and Low Ritual at the Greensboro Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Social Practice Institute, and how that work led to speculative ritual objects like a geodesic sukkah dome, an […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, I share how the Hineni Project carried me from the shock of October 7 into a deeply personal relationship with one family in Israel: the family of Bar Shechter z”l, a young father and psy‑trance DJ murdered at the Nova music festival. Hineni means “Here I am” […]

This episode explores Franz Rosenzweig’s radical vision for Jewish education through the Frankfurt Lehrhaus (1920) and traces its influence into contemporary experiments in creative, future-oriented learning. Rosenzweig rejected passive transmission of knowledge and instead cultivated dialogical, participatory study rooted in lived experience. His Lehrhaus was not simply a school. It was a reorientation of how […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab: Torah, Tech, Tomorrow, host Mike Wirth sits down with his friend, Israeli digital artist and projection‑mapping creator Erez Cohen. Mike first encountered Erez’s work through a projection‑mapping piece called Metamorphosis, where veins and fungi slowly overtake a Jerusalem building and turn the city itself into a living, speculative Jewish […]

In this episode, Mike unpacks Hiddur Olam, his creative Torah system and multi‑volume art book series that reimagines Genesis through Jewish futurism, design thinking, Mussar, and Kabbalah. Listeners will hear how weekly parsha study, visual storytelling, and spiritual practice come together as a framework for beautifying the world through creative Torah. Discover Hiddur Olam, a […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, I sit down with Mexican artist and papaya visionary Alejandro Glatt, the first Mexican artist to send a papaya to the Moon as part of the Lunaprise art museum project connected to NASA’s Artemis missions. Recorded on the day of the Artemis II launch, our conversation weaves together Jewish […]

Before science fiction was a genre, Hugo Gernsback was already building the infrastructure for it: radio magazines, hobbyist communities, wild speculative stories, and the first publication devoted entirely to imagining tomorrow. A Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg, he launched Amazing Stories in 1926 and quietly trained a generation of readers and writers to think in futures, […]

In this episode of The Jewish Futurism Lab, Mike Wirth sits down with Shai Davidai, the Israeli‑born social psychologist and former Columbia Business School professor who became a prominent voice for Jewish students after October 7. Together they trace Shai’s journey from secular Israeli kid to public Jewish advocate, unpack what really happened for him […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Mike Wirth uses the 4C model of creativity to map out what we really mean by “creative” in an age of AI art and endless images. He traces his own journey from parametric code experiments to Jewish futurist murals, then layers in Jewish history, exile, and the […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Jewish futurist and we’ll explore early Jewish futurism, Zionist art, and media history through Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland, Ephraim Moses Lilien’s Zionist Art Nouveau, and Boris Schatz’s Bezalel School in Jerusalem. He contrasts these utopian blueprints and design prototypes with the antisemitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders […]

Walter Benjamin, AI, & the Aura of Art: In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth unpacks Walter Benjamin’s “aura” of art and asks what presence means when every image can be copied, remixed, and generated on demand. Moving from Byzantine icons and ritual objects to photography, social media, NFTs, and AI […]

In this episode, we confront the rise and collapse of Italian Futurism, the avant garde movement that worshiped speed, technology, youth, and rupture at any cost. What began as radical artistic rebellion under Filippo Tommaso Marinetti quickly blurred into nationalism and ultimately aligned itself with fascism. So what went wrong? We examine how aesthetic obsession […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Jewish futurist and community artist Mike Wirth sits down with graphic designer Alex Duchene to explore what it means to be a neurodivergent, Jewish creative. They talk about ADHD “neuro spicey super powers,” how neurodivergence shapes their design practice, and why stories are the throughline that connects their […]