FUTURE FOSSILS

This week I have one of the most vulnerable, personal, and profound conversations ever shared on the show — and it’s one that speaks directly to the deepest and most persistent themes addressed on Future Fossils. Android Jonesis one of the world’s pre-eminent digital painters and an utterly singular and inimitable visionary artist. He’s also a loving husband and father of three, an old friend (even if we don’t talk as often as I’d like, or as perhaps we should), and someone I regard as a torch-bearer along the paths of both professional uncompromising creativity and openly psychedelic parenting. And now he leads the way in helping me and his planet-wide fanbase learn how to process grief and rise from the ashes of loss like a badass phoenix…

A few weeks ago, the barn he inherited from his father— in which he kept all of his creative technology and projects— burned to the ground. Here is the intense and vulnerable two-hour conversation we had about his loss and the spiritual transformations he has undergone since. For the first time ever, Android gives a play-by-play recounting of what happened that fateful morning and how he has grown in the aftermath of losing his “dragon horde” of technology, art, and personal records. And we explore the science and philosophy and esoteric interpretation of what it means to grow beyond the envelope of the human organism into our “extended phenotypes” of technological augmentation — and then to lose it all in a single incandescent moment, laid bare by an Act of God to face the world with sudden and intense rawness.

This is a powerful, one, folks. I’m honored to share it with you…

(Big thanks to Lucid News for inspiring me to do this. You can find a very, very tightly-edited transcript of this discussion on their website.)

Editor’s Note: I mention a passage from William Irwin Thompson’s The American Replacement in Nature in which I misquote him as speaking on “prophets and pastoralists” when in fact he wrote about “mystics and moralists.” You can hear the correct quote in this track from my 2016 Boom Festival performance, which plays at the end of this episode:

"The moralist tends to think the laws of God are more on his side than on his enemy's, so he will try through faith and religion and the exercise of ritual to get God to settle down with him and go along with his way of life. The mystic, however, is not a moralist, for motion, complexity, and an angelic-demonic ambiguity in which one's enemy is also a part of a divine manifestation in history are all part of a cosmic life on the other side of the fence. Home means a lot to moralists, but the mystic is society's alien and is not allowed to have a home smaller than the universe. Any time he tries to settle for less, to settle down and set up fences, God appears as the moving whirlwind."- William Irwin Thompson

✨Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcastsSubscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news onSubstackorPatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp(they take 15%)This conversation continues with lively and respectful interactionevery single dayinthe members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group.Join us!I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping stewardthe Discord serverso I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?

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✨Mentioned & Related Links:Future Fossils Episode 111 - Android Jones on Analog/Digital, Painting the Sutras, & Being an Artist DadComplexity Episode 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeComplexity Episode 35 - Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Ben RidgwayA Manifesto For Live Painting by Michael GarfieldDeath of a SalesmanTrezor Cryptocurrency WalletsJohn Perry BarlowTheme Music:“Olympus Mons” off theMartian Arts EPby Michael Garfield

✨A Special One-Off Sneak Peek at A New Offering for Subscribers:I recently promised members of my Patreon/Substack members-only Facebook group, where I ordinarily share on the order of ten cool external links a day, that I’d be moving my Web curation into a special newsletter supplement for paid subscribers. Here is a public-facing glimpse at yet one more thing you can expect in return for supporting the intense love’s labor that goes into the show and my other creative work:

Recommended Reading:Copyright won't solve creators' Generative AI problem (Cory Doctorow)We’re in a productivity crisis, according to 52 years of data. Things could get really bad. (Michael Simmons)What kind of a "metamodernist" am I, exactly? (Scout Reina Wiley)Successful AI Will Usher in a New Era of Theology (Caveat Magister)Developers Created AI to Generate Police Sketches. Experts Are Horrified (Chloe Xiang at Motherboard)Getty sues Stability AI for copying 12M photos and imitating famous watermark (Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica)How to Practice Long-Term Thinking in a Distracted World (Bina Venkataraman at Wired)How a 'time of crisis' creates a 'crisis of time' (Richard Fisher)Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought (Samo Burja at Palladium)The Edges Cases Where Computing and Physics Intersect (Samuel Arbesman)Cosmic Connection: an anecdote about the Pioneer plaque (Roger’s Bacon)Japanese Philosophies That’ll Help You Spend Money Consciously (Rahul Chowdhury)

Recommended Music:Vertigo Gambler —Juvenile Drama (lush folk-electronic pop co-written and mixed/mastered by fellow Santa Fean Toni Dear)David Forlano —Shiver Like Dust (iPad electronic ambient improvisations)Starling Arrow —Cradle (gorgeous all-star group of female singer-songwriters writing and recording together)fy00g — Mummy Fart! (my old friend and collaborator William Allan Ross’ latest trippy glitchy bass single)Master Margherita —The Sound of Science (new dubbreak 436Hz mix by Moreno, former curator and stage manager of Boom’s Chillout Gardens)

Recommended Video:View From The Other Side (Drew Brophy on NDEs, shared by Charles Eisenstein)How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube (via OpenCulture)Cause and Constraints (Alicia Juarrero at The Complexity Lounge)Residuality Theory: Philosophy and Practice (Barry O’Reilly at The Complexity Lounge)

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

“We want to be careful when we’re in conflict on the internet.”– Tadaaki Hozumi

Tadaaki Hozumi, member of Japan’s oldest surviving lineage of royal Shinto priests, is back for the second part of our three-hour conversation on animism in the ancient-future technological construct-wilderness of the 21st Century! In this episode we discuss the ongoing battle between the spirits of the analog “realm of circles” and the digital “realm of squares,” the blurry boundary between humans and artificial intelligences, the deep commonalities between UFO lore and nature spirit myths, inspirited robots, the simulation hypothesis, and more. Just as with part one, this is not for the epistemically over-determined or the philosophically faint of heart! I don’t cling to a point of view for this podcast and I suggest that you don’t either. But if Tada and his collaborator Georgie Rein Lo are right, we may all be the player-characters in a dragon’s endless dreaming. And honestly, that would explain some things…

Strap in and turn on for a discussion we hopewill help you navigate the very weird-to-modern-Western-minds few years to come!

(Once again, pardon the delay —I’ve been eager to get the entirety of this profound and illuminating discussion out for over a month! Never a dull moment in my home with two small kids. Thanks for your patience and understanding over the last few years as Future Fossils has swayed but not fallen in the strong winds of my suddenly-a-householder life…)

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Subscribe to the podcast, essays, music, and news on Substack or PatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)

This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group.Join us!

I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server so I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?

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✨Mentioned & Related Media:

Future Fossils 197 with Tadaaki Hozumi (Part 1)

More info on the Hozumi clanlunmu.io (Tada's new project with Rein Lo)

“Arts and AI: ‘You May Live To See Man-Made Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension’” by Jamie Curcio

High Weirdness by Erik Davis

Liminal Dreaming by Jennifer Dumpert

“The Holy Spirit Board” (Christian Ouija Board)

Improvising out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael Garfield

Kerri Chandler (reel-to-reel DJ)

A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing The Universe by Michael S. Schneider

“The Story of Calculus” SFI Community Lecture by Steven Strogatz

Programming The Universe by Seth Lloyd

The Infoboros by Vidur Mishra

Rich “M0b1us” Doyle

“Aphanopoiesis” by Nora Bateson

Future Fossils 65 & 71 (on Blade Runner 2049)

Future Fossils 14 (on Westworld HBO)

Everything You Wanted To Know But Were Never Told by David Icke

Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée

Supernatural by Graham Hancock

“When The Orbit Curtain Falls” by Michael Garfield (song)

Tom Montalk

Graham Hancock on Underwater Japanese Temples & The Great Sphinx

Future Fossils 124 with Norman Katz

Sense8 (Netflix)

“How Stories Last” by Neil Gaiman at LongNow.org

“The Evolution of Covert Signaling” by Paul Smaldino et al.

“The 100 Oldest Companies” by Kevin Kelly at LongNow.org

“Unlikely Historical Events” by Jason Kottke

aibo (robot dog by SONY)

Future Fossils 57 - Conner Habib & Mitch Mignano on Occult Biology

Theme Music: “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts EP by Michael Garfield

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week and next, we talk to returning guest Tadaaki Hozumi about the crossroads between the esoteric history of Japan and its Indigenous peoples and royal family; the mysterious convergence of ancient records from around the world on stories of lost civilizations and extraterrestrial encounters; and how animism and magic seem ripe for retrieval as we barrel down the chute of the Technological Singularity.

This is one of those edge-case conversations that I’ll look back on in twenty years and either consider totally insane or uncanny in its prophetic insights. I don’t confidently recommend every mention in the show notes as an authoritative final source, but I refuse to censor our citations out of my commitment to humility about What’s Really Going On. This is a truly off-road dialogue on ideas so far outside of the dominant world-space of early 21st-Century Western thinking as to constitute a reputational risk, but what else is this show for than to showcase maverick thinkers and strange, potentially transformative speculations anchored in careful independent study?

Strap in for a crash course on hidden temple texts, occult perspectives on the analog-digital divide, and alternative narratives so bizarre and interesting I consider them worth review on aesthetic grounds alone! Tada is one of those “too weird to live, too rare to die” wizards and wonders I’m honored to call a friend and colleague, and I’m delighted to have them back on Future Fossils to explore the Real with you.

In Tada’s own blog post about this episode, they say:

“It was an incredible opportunity to get to speak so freely about ancient-future matters on a prolific podcast with a name that basically captures the essence of the discussion. I've always appreciated Michael's kindness and bravery as a host, not just of a podcast but of whole online communities, who is committed to giving his listenership and community the permission to explore the strangest possibilities of human existence.”

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This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group.Join us!

I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server so I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?

✨ Support The Show:

Subscribe to the podcast, essays, music, and news on Substack or PatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)

✨ Tip Jars:

@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal

✨Mentioned & Related Media:

Future Fossils 149 - Cultural Somatics & Ritual as Justice with Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, and Naomi Most

Graham Hancock’s hotly-debated Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse

Future Fossils 14 - WESTWORLD Problems (feat. Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops)

Future Fossils 65 - John David Ebert (Hypermodernity & Blade Runner 2049)

The Evolution of Surveillance by Michael Garfield

Improvising out of Algorithmic Isolation by Michael Garfield

Future Fossils 179 - Scout-Lieder Wiley on Transrational Oracles & Magical Thinking in The 21st Century

Future Fossils 195 - A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher Sipes

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey

William Irwin Thompson – Exodus as Revolution (Prophecy and Revolution: Five Lectures on the Old Testament, #3)

Future Fossils 178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch Institutions

Remember Who You Are Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' from by David Icke

The Arcturus Probe: Tales and Reports of an Ongoing Investigation by Jose Arguelles

EVIDENCE OF A MASSIVE THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS ON MARS IN THE PAST: The Cydonian Hypothesis and Fermi's Paradox by J. E. Brandenburg

Takenouchi Documents

Future Fossils 117 - Eric Wargo on Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious

Sun-Moon Revelations / Hitsuki Shinji (1, 2)

Future Fossils 176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin Summit

Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness by William Irwin Thompson

Future Fossils 181 - Jim Rutt on The Pre- and Post-History of GameB

UCLA social scientist Paul Smaldino on covert signaling, identity, and social learning

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

More info on the Hozumi clan

Rein Lo (1, 2)

Japanese-Jewish Common Ancestry Theory

Nigihayahi

Fuxi Nuwa (compass and square)

Episode Music: “Olympus Mons” off the Martian Arts EP by Michael Garfield

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

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“Notice more. Let go. Use everything.”

I’ve decided Future Fossils is going to double down on its commitment to helping people navigate uncharted waters by focusing explicitly on improvisation in 2023, and our first stop together on this journey is a marvelously soulful and profound discussion with my friend Robert Poynton.

Robert is many things, including an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, where he runs executive education programs that help leaders understand and work with complex change. He also runs Yellow Learning (“a regenerative space for a complex world”), which I recommend highly as the kind of group experience you actually WANT to be involved in online…and he’s a husband and father of three adult sons who helps his wife run an organic beef farm in rural Spain.

But perhaps the most salient point is that he wrote an amazing book called Do Improvise —one of the finest I’ve ever encountered on the subject — so that’s the focus of our conversation. Join us as we discuss how to tune in, surrender, and make the most of whatever life throws your way…

This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group.Join us!

I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server, which I am releasing into the wilds as a fan-operated platform in 2023.

PS —I’ve moved Future Fossils to Substack. There you will find my entire archives AND an increasingly-complete (but as yet not-entirely-migrated) repository of essays and blogs dating back to the Mesozoic. (If you prefer Substack over Patreon, I’m totally happy to take your support there, as well as or instead of…but I have not yet figured out how to handle posting subscribers-only content to both platforms.)

✨ Support The Show:

Subscribe to my work in all media on PatreonSubscribe to the podcast and monthly newsletter on SubstackBuy my original paintings or commission new work

✨ Tip Jars:

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✨Mentioned & Related Media:

Stuart Firestein on Ignorance, Failure, Uncertainty, and The Optimism of Science

MG Twitter thread re: Weird Studies and ergodic vs. nonergodic storytelling

The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Gary Hirsch (friend of Rob’s)

Margaret Heffernan on Hidden Forces Podcast: How To Navigate an Unpredictable World

Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Everything’s An Offer by Rob Poynton (unavailable at Bookshop.org)

Exaptation of the Guitar by MG

The Future is Exapted and Remixed by MG

Episode Music: Beta Pavonis & Delta Pavonis by MG

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Complete show notes at Patreon

Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts

Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc.

✨ About This Episode:

This week we dig down as what W.J.T. Mitchell called “paleontologists of the present” to explore the ramifications of A.I. on the creative economy as lensed through two notorious William Gibson quotes: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed” and “The street finds its own uses for things.” Joining me on the call are artists Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, James Curcio, Topher Sipes, and Julian Picaza — all of whom I hold in high esteem and all of whom are doing fascinating things both with A.I. tools and without them.

I recommend this profound discussion for some refreshing sobriety in what has so far proven to be a totally crazy pants public discourse dominated by people who either submit unthinkingly to new technologies or run from them screaming without anchoring their perspectives in any kind of historical perspective whatsoever…

Be sure to give this episode’s extensive show notes your careful attention, as I’ve collected here a whole semester’s worth of reading and listening materials on this and adjacent subjects with the goal of having a single master compendium to drop into public threads on these subjects whenever possible. (I of course encourage you to do the same!)

This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!

Lastly, a note about the audio: Once again I had horrible technical issues with my recording platform and had to spend time piecing this conversation back together instead of giving it a proper edit and mix treatment. My apologies for not managing to match the style to the substance…but this conversation is so timely and urgent I didn’t want to waste another two weeks polishing it before getting it to you.

Enjoy, and thanks for listening!

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How much of natural history is inevitable, and how much is the result of chance? Do mass extinctions slow the evolution of the biosphere, or speed it up? These are two of the six great questions of biology explored by Simon Conway Morris, famous evolutionary theorist, in his latest book. From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution (Templeton Press) is a meticulously researched, cheeky and inspiring romp through both the living and extinct worlds, challenging a handful of widespread beliefs and offering provocative alternatives. Conway Morris is a character, even amidst the strange ranks of his fellow natural history researchers, and his arguments bear careful scrutiny. As someone drawn to mavericks and weirdos and enamored by contrarian perspectives, I can’t help but like his work — and reading him forced me to reconsider some of my assumptions even as it validated other long-held hunches.

In this episode, we talk about his book and what his work implies — and I get fanboy on him and assault him with a bunch of lengthy questions like Tim Murphy in Jurassic Park. Strap in for a deep dive into evolution’s laziness, complexity and process, cooption and repurposing of novel traits, great puzzles in prehistory, ancient food webs, evolutionary radiation, symbiosis, flowers, death, and more… And when you’re done, go read his book and dig a dozen more related episodes on Patreon!

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This week I talk with environmental philosopher and Santa Clara Clara Assistant Professor Kimberly Dill, an old friend of mine from Austin, Texas whom I met at Bouldin Creek Coffee over lemon maté sours and a deep dive into Eastern nondual traditions while she was in school studying arguments against free will under acclaimed analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. She has since grown into a formidable scholar and ethics instructor in her own right and positively exudes a studious, diligent, caring, and starry-eyed vibe at all times…an utterly unique and finely-honed heart and intellect who stands out from the rest of my belovedly strange cohort of Austin festival-going slacker friends.

I’ve been chasing her down to be on the podcast for years and am delighted she and I finally managed to link up to record this potent dialogue on the relationality of humankind and the wild world in which we are inextricably entangled, the substantive differences between our simulations and the originals they fail to fully reproduce, the importance of forests and dark skies to our psychospiritual well-being, where modern Western festival culture fails in its declared goal of delivering us back into right relations and ecstatic harmony with our kosmos…plus much else.

Read the ✨ EXTENSIVE ✨ show notes, and join the Future Fossils community, at Patreon.

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✨ Side Note:

My big, BIG thanks to everyone for being so patient with me while my family and I suffered through some extraordinary challenges over the last months. I can’t tell you enough how much it means to me to have retained nearly everyone’s Patreon support while my wife and I dealt with two constantly sick kids, a number of our own health issues, and major upgrades to our home and big transitions at work.

The good news is that I also managed to record interviews with the legendary Simon Conway Morris and Robert Poynton in that time and will be sharing those with you in short order! So, again, thanks for your subscriptions, your glowing Apple Podcasts reviews, and your engagement in the Future Fossils Facebook group…and stay tuned for several exciting big announcements soon!

(Big thanks to my father-in-law Kevin Taylor for helping edit this episode!)

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This week I go solo and get reflective on age, noise, loss, mystery, stars and angels, dreams and seasons, modern science and the retrieval of magic...

Read the ✨ EXTENSIVE ✨ show notes, and join the Future Fossils community, at Patreon.

cataract(n.)

early 15c., "a waterfall, floodgate, furious rush of water," from Latincataracta"waterfall," from Greekkatarhaktes"waterfall, broken water; a kind of portcullis," noun use of an adjective compound meaning "swooping, down-rushing," fromkata"down" (seecata-). The second element is traced either toarhattein"to strike hard" (in which case the compound iskat-arrhattein), or torhattein"to dash, break." Its alternative sense in Latin of "portcullis" probably passed through French and gave English the meaning "eye disease characterized by opacity of the lens" (early 15c.), on the notion of "obstruction" (to eyesight). (from etymology.com)

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Aldebaran by Michael Garfield (2020) (prints available)

Pavo: Music for Mystery by Michael Garfield (2017)

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This week on the show I chat with the storied, insightful, multidimensional Roland Harwood (Twitter | LinkedIn | Liminal | Participatory City Foundation) —a “compulsive connector,” generalist, “failed astronaut,” pianist, Founder, CEO, Trustee, impresario of international collective intelligence projects, and generally fascinating person. In a conversation that already feels somewhat archaeological (it was recorded in November 2021 and references discussions that have already developed significantly over the last year), we explore the martial art of living in transition, of thriving in the in-between spaces, of dealing with the unpredictable and the fundamental uncertainty of our lives. We also rap on the subjects of innovation, global weirding, organizational evolution, technology, hope, and happiness. Dig into the complete show notes for plenty to follow up on!

Intro and outro music is from my forthcoming EP, “Ephemeropolis,” available soon at Bandcamp and Patreon.

Special thanks to Tami Pudina for her help with this episode! Check out her work at hyperdriveanthropology.com.

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This week we’re joined by Lauren Seyler, Assistant Professor of Biology at Stockton University (Lab Website, Twitter @darkmicrobio, Google Scholar), who studies the microscopic living world that flourishes in dark places: the mud of coastal marshes, inside rocks, and in sediments at the bottom of the sea.She’s also co-authored a number of publications on how scientists can work ethically with Indigenous peoples, and applies her scientific research to questions of astrobiology: the search for life and intelligence in outer space.

In this episode, we discuss the life/non-life boundary, evolution as thermodynamics, anaerobic microbes as the invisible labor supporting all life on Earth, the origin of life: in the light, or in the dark?, the wonderful world of -omics, individual vs. Institutional agency and the necessary revolution of consciousness required for effective collective action at planetary scale, power and responsibility, best practices for working with the Indigenous as a scientist, stepping up to biospheric stewardship, and practicing right relations across scales (not just micro-macro but also across space and time).

Special thanks to Tami Pudina for her help with editing this episode! Check out her work at hyperdriveanthropology.com.

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