Long Now: Conversations at The Interval

May 01 2024 66 ep. 67 mins 3.1k

Long Now: Conversations at The Interval Podcast artwork

A long-term thinking lecture series from The Long Now Foundation: these hour long talks are recorded live at The Interval, our bar / cafe / museum in San Francisco. Since 02014 this series has presented artists, authors, entrepreneurs, scientists (and more) taking a long-term perspective on subjects like art, design, history, nature, technology, and time. You can learn more about The Interval and this series at theinterval.org, where we have full videos of the talks on this podcast.

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The Bureau of Linguistical Reality Performance Lecture: Alicia Escott, Heidi Quante

May 01 2024 50 mins

The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a participatory artwork facilitated by artist Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante which collaborates with the public to create new words for feelings and experiences for which no words yet exist. Recognizing the climate crisis is causing new feelings and experiences that have yet to be named, the project was created with a deep focus on these and ot

Indigenous Sovereign Futures: Jonathan Cordero

Apr 19 2024 55 mins

Alternative visions for social change rooted in the frameworks of capitalism and colonialism only reproduce contemporary structures of power. How can indigenous perspectives and knowledge inform the structural transformation necessary to improve the health of the natural world and of human communities? Dr. Cordero will discuss how indigenous epistemologies challenge the ideas and

Embodied Economies: How our Economic Stories Shape the World: Denise Hearn

Mar 07 2024 56 mins

Economic policy can seem abstract and distant, but it manifests the physical world – affecting us all. Our economic stories shape our systems, and they in turn shape us. What myths continue to constrain us, and how might new stories emerge to scaffold the future? This talk will explore concepts we often take as gospel: profits, competition, economic value, efficiency, and oth

Hijacked Histories, Polarized Futures: Abby Smith Rumsey

Nov 21 2023 55 mins

As authoritarianism continues to rise around the world, the stories we tell ourselves about our collective history become a battleground for competing visions of the future. Drawing extensively from Russian history in the 20th century, Rumsey offers a framework to discuss our current social and political tensions and how our increasing polarization could shape our future.

The False Promise of Optimization: Coco Krumme

Oct 18 2023 31 mins

Coco Krumme traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America's founding principles, to its dominance as the driving principle of our modern world. Optimized models underlie everything and are deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality, but what we make of it. How did a mathematical concept tak

Resisting Dystopia: Becky Chambers, Annalee Newitz

Jun 15 2023 55 mins

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation between two Hugo award-winning science fiction authors, Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz. Known for challenging classic science fiction tropes such as war, violence, and colonialism, both authors create vivid and immersive worlds that are filled with non-human persons, peace, and a subtle sense of hope. The authors will discuss what it

Psychedelics: History at the Crossroads: Ismail Ali

Mar 21 2023 58 mins

Psychedelics and other mind-altering substances have been used for thousands of years across the world in religious, spiritual, celebratory, and healing contexts. Despite a half century of a "War on Drugs" in the United States, there has been a recent resurgence in public interest in ending drug prohibition and re-evaluating the roles these substances can play in modern society. W

How to Invent Everything: Ryan North

How would someone fare if they were dropped into a randomly chosen period in history? Would they have any relevant knowledge to share, or ability to invent crucial technologies given the period's constraints? Ryan North uses these hypothetical questions to explore the technological and implicit knowledge underpinning modern civilization, offering a practical guide of how one could

Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Foster Resilience and Co-create the Cities We Need: Johanna Hoffman

Jan 20 2023 56 mins

Urbanist, researcher and writer Johanna Hoffman joins us to talk about speculative futures -- a powerful set of tools that can reorient urban development help us dream and build more resilient, equitable cities. Navigating modern change depends on imagining futures we’ve never seen. Urban planning and design should be well positioned to spearhead that work, but calculated ratio

Drinking for 10,000 Years: Intoxication and Civilization: Edward Slingerland

Jul 25 2022 65 mins

See the full description of this talk on our new website: Edward Slingerland, "Drinking for 10,000 Years: Intoxication and Civilization".