Being in the World

The Godmother of Bombay Beach discusses having 3 children before she was 18, the life and death of her first son Roger, her second son Adam's 20 year stint in federal prison for bank robbery, the evolution of Bombay Beach, the role of art and death in our lives, and much more.

Tao takes a walk with his friend Eric Kaplan, a TV writer (Futurama, Big Bang Theory, etc.) with a PhD in philosophy. They try to get to the bottom of what makes a good story and what makes a good storyteller. Yucca Valley July 13, 2023

Riccardo Manzotti is a philosopher, psychologist, and AI expert and the author of The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World Are One. Born in Parma, Italy, in 1969, Manzotti received his PhD from the University of Genova in 2001, and is currently full professor of theoretical philosophy at IULM University (Milan). He has been Fulbright Visiting Scholar at MIT (Boston).Manzotti originally specialized in robotics and AI where he started to wonder how can matter have experience of the surrounding world. Eventually he has been a psychologist from 2004 to 2015 and then he has become a full time philosopher. His current research focuses on the issue of consciousness and the structure of reality: What is the relationship between experience and the physical world? What is consciousness? Is there a separation between our experience of the world and the world? Does the present have a fixed time span? Can we design and build a conscious machine? What ethical questions do consciousness and technology raise in the 21st century? In 2014, at MIT, Riccardo Manzotti presented the Spread Mind Theory (elsewhere dubbed the Mind-Object Identity Theory) that addresses the hard problem of consciousness in a completely radical and new way. Over the last few years, Manzotti has continued to develop and test this hypothesis interacting with the international scientific and philosophical community. Published in 2018, Manzotti’s The Spread Mind has outlined a radical change in the way we conceive us and the world. Based on empirical evidence from physics and neuroscience, the book develops and verify the astonishing hypothesis that our conscious experience is indeed one and the same with the external world. The book revisits familiar notions about dreams, illusions, and hallucinations. The book has been translated in many languages such as Chinese, Italian, Turkish. In 2019 Riccardo Manzotti returned together with the acclaimed novelist Tim Parks with Dialogues on Consciousness, an engaging and humorous dialogue about the nature of consciousness and our everyday life. Prof. Manzotti lectures around the world on the topics explored in his books and articles, and has written for publications such as The New York Review of Books, Doppio Zero. He also offers his knowledge and time to various organizations and audiences on a voluntary basis.

Dulcinée is a filmmaker, conceptual/performance artist, & Systems Architect for the Bombay Beach Biennale. Tao and Dulcinée have a frank and vulnerable conversation about both personal and societal mental health following her recent Bipolar 2 diagnosis. Speaking publicly about it for the first time, Dulcinée and Tao explore the complex landscape of contemporary mental health, using both an autobiographical framework and a sociopolitical analysis, to outline the personal, the psychological, the political, the philosophical, and the communal aspects of being in the world...

Tao talks to chatGPT4 about its philosophical, political, and creative implications. Part 2 of 2

Tao talks to chatGPT 4 about its philosophical, political, and creative implications.

Chris and Anya visit Tao in desert after an around the world trip. 

Tao and Anya, host of A Millennial's guide to Saving The World, discuss astrology and whether it's possible to find meaning in it in a similar way we find meaning in fictions and mythological tales. They discuss archetypes and the collective unconscious and stories that can help guide us through this life without a need to "believe" in something supernatural or anti-scientific.    Many people assume, for instance, that astrology is all nonsense. It is true that astrology has nothing to do with the stars. The horoscope may say that you were born in Taurus, but the constellations today have moved and horoscopes no longer correspond to the actual positions of the stars. … But people criticize astrology as though it had something to do with the stars. – C. G. Jung in 1929 We see that menstruation has a moon period, yet it does not coincide with the phases of the moon; otherwise all women would menstruate at the same time, and they don’t. It simply means that there is a moon-law in every woman and likewise the laws of the stars in every human being but not in the relation of cause and effect. C.G. Jung, December 11, 1929 The fact that it is possible to reconstruct a person’s character fairly accurately from his birth data shows the relative validity of astrology. It must be remembered, however, that the birth data are in no way dependent on the actual astronomical constellations, but are based on an arbitrary, purely conceptual time system. Owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the spring-point has long since moved out of the constellation of Aries into Pisces, so that the astrological zodiac on which horoscopes are calculated no longer corresponds to the heavenly one. If there are any astrological diagnoses of character that are in fact correct, this is due not to the influence of the stars but to our own hypothetical time qualities. In other words, whatever is born or done at this particular moment of time has the quality of this moment of time. C.G. Jung

Patrick House's new book 19 Ways of Looking at Consciousness now available everywhere books are sold...Get it, read it, give it, talk about it, post about it, and let us know what you think.   Thanks everyone!

Tao sits down with his old friend James Fox, a British journalist best known for his book White Mischief, and for co-authoring Life, the best-selling memoir of Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards. *There was a 2 minute interruption in the conversation due to a technical difficulty when Tao asks about cultural appropriation. Our apologies.

We go deeper.

Tao and artist James Ostrer delve into murky waters of colonialism, white privilege, art, gentrification, addiction, and commodification. See James' brilliant work at www.jamesostrer.com

Adam Freeland is an old friend, desert neighbor, and brilliant music producer and DJ. Adam & Tao wax philosophical about the nature of music and the music of nature.

Dr. Patrick House and Tao discuss the last 8 days spent on the island of San Servolo, (former monastery, leper colony and insane asylum,) where they attended a conference on the neuroscience of consciousness.

Christof Koch is a German-American neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. From 1986 until 2013, he was a professor at the California Institute of Technology.   Tao and Christof sit down at the tail end of an 8 day conference on the neuroscience of consciousness held on the island of San Servolo, off the coast of Venice, Italy.

Tao sits down with billionaire philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen, Chairman of the Berggruen Institute, on the eve of giving his institute's Prize for Philosophy and Culture to Peter Singer. The $1 million award is given annually to thinkers whose ideas have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world.    Tao asks some challenging political and philosophical questions, asking Nicolas if there should be billionaires in the world, notwithstanding the good they may be capable of doing, especially given how arbitrary and unjust allocation of wealth can be, and given Nicolas's own youthful flirtations with Marxism and his love of famously leftist philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre.  Video version available on YouTube. https://www.berggruen.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Berggruen

Tao and Dulcinee (writer, director, editor, producer of both films and of the latest  Bombay Beach Biennale,) have an honest, open, and wide ranging conversation about their relationship, including what it's like to work and play together and how to integrate their love and sex life (including consensual power exchange and D/s dynamics,) with their creative and career ambitions and their social and political ideals.

A wonderful and unexpectedly coherent conversation, given very little sleep...I had a lot on my mind and managed to express it thanks in large part to Eamon's top notch interviewing skills. Be sure to check out his podcast, Life is a Festival.

A wide ranging discussion in Lake Tahoe with 2 of my favorite people...

Burning Man 2021 was cancelled. 15,000 of us went anyway. Tao and Scott discuss, among many other things, the past 2 decades of Burning Man and what we may learn from the changing nature of the event about anarchist principles.