Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking

Dec 10 2024 261 ep. 76 mins 17.6k

Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking Podcast artwork

Explore hundreds of lectures by scientists, historians, artists, entrepreneurs, and more through The Long Now Foundation's award-winning lecture series, curated and hosted by Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog). Recorded live in San Francisco each month since 02003, past speakers include Brian Eno, Neil Gaiman, Sylvia Earle, Daniel Kahneman, Jennifer Pahlka, Steven Johnson, and many more. Watch video of these talks and learn more about our projects at Longnow.org. The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility.

Society & Culture Education Technology

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

Roman Krznaric, Kate Raworth: What Doughnut Economics Can Learn From History

Dec 10 2024 52 mins

Social philosopher Roman Krznaric and renegade economist Kate Raworth explore how we can survive and thrive by looking to the past for clues on how to build more regenerative economic frameworks. Doughnut economics describes the social and planetary boundaries needed for all people to prosper within the means of the living planet. Studying historic examples through the lens of doug

Neal Stephenson: Polostan

Nov 13 2024 56 mins

Neal Stephenson, visionary speculative fiction author and long-time friend of Long Now, joined us for a conversation with journalist Charles C. Mann on the research behind his new novel Polostan, the dawn of the Atomic Age, and the craft of historical storytelling. Polostan is the first installment in a monumental new series called Bomb Light - an expansive historical epic of in

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

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

Jonathan Cordero: Indigenous Sovereign Futures

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

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

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

Jared Farmer: Chronodiversity: Thinking about Time with Trees

Big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees have always been objects of reverence. From Athena’s sacred olive on the Acropolis to the unmistakable ginkgo leaf prevalent in Japanese art and fashion during the Edo period, our profound admiration for slow plants spans time and place as well as cultures and religions. At the same time, the utilization and indeed the desecratio

Abby Smith Rumsey: Hijacked Histories, Polarized Futures

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.

Henry Farrell: The Complex Aftermath of Globalization

Nov 16 2023 59 mins

Over the last two years, the US government has started thinking about the future of the world in a very different way. Across speeches and policy papers, a vision of world politics has emerged which breaks sharply both with the old logic of the Cold War and the newer politics of globalization. The globalization bet has turned sour, but it has created a far more closely connected

Coco Krumme: The False Promise of Optimization

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

Bette Adriaanse, Chelsea T. Hicks: Radical Sharing

Oct 09 2023 56 mins

Our bodies, our houses, our land, our space - we humans don’t always like to share. Author Bette Adriaanse talks with Chelsea T. Hicks, and virtual guests Brian Eno and Aqui Thami, about property and sharing, and how to make a lasting positive change in the way we share the world with each other. Alternating between thinkers and doers, whose actions help foster long term equality