A couple plot twists to note with this episode!First: instead of my usual intro, you’ll notice we’re showing a clip from Steve’s new feature-length video essay/doc Reality Frictions. So I’d strongly recommend that you watch at least the first few minutes on Substack or YouTube. My hope is that doing it this way gives you the best context for what he and I dive into in our conversation. Moreover, I hope it whets your appetite to go see the film—it’s a nourishing and thought-provoking journey (the combination of Steve’s voice, cadence, ideas, and editing chops have a sort of ASMR-delight effect for my brain, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one).Second: you’ll notice that this episode was filmed in my former Los Angeles location. We’ve actually been holding onto this episode a little longer than usual in order to time it to the LA premiere and—drum roll—that day is on the calendar! December 12. So for my dear Los Angeles audience, here’s the information:UCLA Film & Television Archive and Los Angeles Filmforum present:December 12 at the UCLA Film & TV Archive Billy Wilder Theater, the Hammer MuseumIn person: Q&A with Steve F. Anderson, filmmaker and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, moderated by Los Angeles Filmforum programmer Diego Robles.More info at UCLA Film & Television Archive or Los Angeles Filmforum.Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).As filmmaker Thom Andersen demonstrates in the iconic video essay/documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself—and in fact, as you’ll hear in the conversation, Steve worked with Andersen!—locals can easily be pulled out of a movie’s car chase when the on-screen geography doesn’t match the actual layout of the city. Inspired by this blend of authenticity and illusion, Anderson examines the “intersection of fact and fiction on Hollywood’s screens,” which gives way to a broader analysis of this interplay. How do screen representations shape reality? Likewise, what happens when reality intrudes on screened depictions?Of course, this is a conversation that cannot not look at the emerging wave of AI-generated imagery and video. Mind you, we recorded this episode before Google’s Veo 3 and OpenAI’s Sora 2 were launched, and still, Steve’s sense of things is spot-on, grounded in a long view of how media has always been a means of constructing rather than merely depicting reality. Thus, the question of “Capital-T Truth” in film, while perhaps a rich intellectual discussion, is in many ways a misguided one, or misses what’s really at work.We also touch on the importance of digital commons, drawing from Steve’s work with Critical Commons, as well as ideas drawn from his various prior books: Technologies of Vision, Technologies of History, and Reclaiming Popular Documentary. In a moment when the subject of visual representations of reality has never held more societal import, I’m sure you’re going to appreciate this rich, wide-ranging conversation, so get to it!BIO: Steve F. Anderson is a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of media, history, technology and culture. He is currently a Professor of Digital Media at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. He is the author of Technologies of Vision: The War Between Data and Images (MIT 2017) and Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past (Dartmouth 2011) and co-editor of the anthology Reclaiming Popular Documentary (Indiana 2021). Anderson is also the founder of the appropriation-friendly public media archive Critical Commons and co-PI on the electronic authoring platform Scalar. His recent creative work includes the mixed reality installation Live-VR Corridor (2021), which won the award for Best Mixed Reality at the New Media Film Festival and premiered internationally at the Beijing International Film Festival. His feature-length video essay Reality Frictions premiered at the Madrid International Film Festival in 2024. He received a Ph.D. in Film, Literature and Culture from USC and an M.F.A. in Film and Video from CalArts.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
The unfortunate reality is that, in a warming world, we're going to be learning about 'wet-bulb temperature' (WBT) the hard way more and more. These are temperatures at which it is hot enough to cause the human body heat stress and humid enough to prevent it from cooling off through sweat. So today's guest, Colin Raymond, joins me to dig into what they are & what we can do to stay safe & build resilience.As many of you know by now, I’m currently working on a book manuscript called How to Survive the 21st Century. Modest, I know. It’s a journalistic effort, in which I draw from the insights of experts in various fields to sketch the major crises we face today and what more effective responses to them might be. I’ve been fortunate to speak with many experts whose ideas I’ve already included in the book, but as I set out to work on my “Heat, Humidity, and Fire” chapter, I realized I’d never actually had a guest on who could speak to the issue of WBTsSupport the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).Without getting into spoiler territory, a wet-bulb event plays a key role in Kim Stanley Robinson’s superb Ministry for the Future—by the way, if you haven’t read that book yet, take this as your sign to jump it to the top of your list.Given how much of a threat wet-bulb temperatures already pose—and the fact that their likelihood is unfortunately going to intensify, alongside degradation of the infrastructure that would mitigate the harms they produce—I knew I needed to address this immediately. Which is why I was so excited to discover Colin’s work.Not only is he deeply knowledgeable about the topic of wet-bulb temperatures, and guides us through the risks they pose to us—but he also has expertise in the broader arena of climate extremes. Here are some titles of recent papers he’s authored and co-authored: “Do summertime atmospheric rivers meaningfully promote humid heat?” “How might extreme climate events be connected, and why does it matter?” and “How are key compound risks changing in a warming and moistening world?” He’s also facilitated workshops that seek to surface collective insights about these existential risks.Many scientists are content to stay in their narrow line—and there’s nothing wrong with that—but it takes a really special mind to take this transdisciplinary approach to their work. And that comes through in this conversation—so I’m going to get out of your way and let you hear it directly from Dr. Colin Raymond.BIO: Dr. Colin Raymond is a research scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work centers on understanding the intricate interactions of weather, geography, and human systems that drive extreme humid heat and its impacts, now and in the future. He draws upon a variety of approaches, from direct observations and climate models to storyline development, in the service of producing and communicating accessible and actionable climate information.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Where to begin with this conversation? First I’ll say, it’s an absolute pleasure to speak with polymaths. I try to do it as much as I can on the show, and Jake is an exemplar, able to dance across topics with depth and nuance. As such, you’ll notice that we move from questions about the futures of AI in society to contemporary politics to that conversation between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates.What I especially love is how his ongoing research into behavioral and cognitive science has informed his approach to AI, a topic that has become inescapable, and such, is often crowded with noise and takes that are aggressively mid at best. But Jake has been consistently early and right about this stuff—even “calling” the Trump election in the PBS docu-series Hacking Your Mind. Meanwhile, he published The Loop: How AI is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, mere months before Midjourney and ChatGPT took off in 2022, effectively sketching the key threats that would make themselves undeniable over the following years. These are the early jump-off points in our conversation, but it swerves delightfully from there, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. So I’ll get out of the way and let you enjoy this rich conversation with Jacob Ward.Buy The Loop: How AI is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back here.Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).BIO: Jacob Ward is a veteran journalist covering the intersection of technology, human behavior, and social change. He’s currently reporter-in-residence at The Omidyar Network, writing about cutting-edge innovation and pioneering forms of restraint, and a strategic advisor on the deployment of A.I. for companies large and small. From 2018 to 2024 he was technology correspondent for NBC News, reporting for Nightly News, The TODAY Show, and MSNBC. He is the former editor-in-chief of Popular Science magazine, and was Al Jazeera’s science and technology correspondent from 2013 to 2018. Ward is a lecturer at the Stanford d.school, and was a 2018-2019 Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where he began writing The Loop: How AI is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, out now from Hachette Book Group. The book explores how artificial intelligence and other decision-shaping technologies will amplify good and bad human instincts, and predicted the AI psychosis in which society is currently mired. Ward has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and many other publications. In addition to hosting documentaries for Nat Geo and Discovery, he’s the host and co-writer of the landmark four-hour PBS television series, “Hacking Your Mind,” about human decision-making, behavioral economics, and political manipulation. His weekly podcast The Rip Current covers the big, hidden forces at work in our lives, and he speaks to an audience of more than 250,000 viewers on TikTok, on podcast appearances, and on This Week in Tech, where he’s a regular co-host.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
If you’re paying attention at all, everything feels topsy-turvy at best, more likely outright depressing. Unidentified masked ICE agents are still brutalizing and snatching people off the street, free speech protections are being violated with abandon, the government shutdown continues to wreak havoc, most visible with recent news that SNAP benefits, relied on by 40 million Americans, are set to expire on Nov. 1. Then there’s the $300 million ballroom being built in the site formerly known as the East Wing of the White House, the fact that Donald Trump is suing his own Justice Department to the tune of $230 million, the cumulative $40 billion that’s been sent to bail out Argentina…and I’m literally just writing the stuff that comes to the top of my head as I sit here.Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).Of course, all of that pales in comparison to what has actually been keeping me up at night the past few months: this report, which asserts that without dramatic change we’re headed for a 3°C+ world by 2050—less than 25 years from this moment. This doesn’t just mean life but a little bit hotter; it means the unraveling of the biosphere. For most of the life on this planet, us included, 3°C+ is a death sentence.Our brains and hearts weren’t designed for this onslaught of news. That’s not a way of saying that we should bury our heads in the sand—we don’t have that luxury—but it does mean that all of us could use some guidance on how to sustain our mental health and emotional wellbeing while we commit ourselves to the work of adaptation and more liberatory futures.This is the vital work Anya is conducting for her forthcoming book, and (though it sounds weird to put it this way after what I just wrote!) why I was excited to speak with her. What are the ways we should be thinking about mental and emotional resilience, what are practices we should consider for ourselves, and what are the dimensions we need to understand about how this is impacting young people? We discuss all of that and a whole lot more—including the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on young people and an anecdote involving Bari Weiss, now the Editor-in-Chief of CBS News.BIO: Anya Kamenetz speaks, writes, and thinks about thriving and caring for others on a rapidly changing planet. Her newsletter on these topics is The Golden Hour. She covered education for many years including for NPR, where she co-created the podcast Life Kit: Parenting. Her last book was The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, And Where We Go Now. Kamenetz is currently an advisor to the Aspen Institute and the Climate Mental Health Network, working on new initiatives at the intersection of children, well-being, education, and climate change. Her next book, forthcoming from Bloomsbury, is about how to cope with the world right now.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
You may have noticed that the quality of your digital life has been on the decline—in tandem with the ongoing attacks on (whatever’s left of) democratic function in the United States. It’s important to remember that this is not something that has simply happened, like the weather. These are systems that have been designed, albeit by many different people across many different industries (and with varying degrees of awareness). Key to all of it is the unholy marriage between algorithmic social media and those who exploit its features to foster division and consensus breakdown.This is why disinformation remains a vital topic in 2025, even though the term itself doesn’t capture public attention the same way it did back in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Paradoxically, it’s actually far more pervasive in our lives now than it was before—especially given that these playbooks are now in the hands of state and private actors all around the world. And of course, now we have to account for the role generative AI plays as a force multiplier.Thus, it felt like an important moment to stop back in with Nina to recap some key aspects of her past work and turn our eyes toward the present and future. What’s happening and what can we do about it? Watch/listen on!Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).BIO: Nina Jankowicz is an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization and one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.Her debut book, How to Lose the Information War (Bloomsbury 2020), was named a New Statesman 2020 book of the year; The New Yorker called it “a persuasive new book on disinformation as a geopolitical strategy.” Her second book, How to Be A Woman Online (Bloomsbury 2022), an examination of online abuse and disinformation and tips for fighting back, was deemed “essential” by Publisher’s Weekly. She was recognized for her Distinguished Professional Contributions to Media Psychology and Technology in 2024 by Division 46 of the American Psychological Association.Buy 'How to Lose the Information War' here.Buy 'How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back' here.Jankowicz’s expertise spans the public, private, and academic sectors. She is the co-founder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project, a bipartisan group increasing the cost of lies that undermine democracy. She has advised governments, international organizations, and tech companies; testified before the United States Congress and the UK, Canadian, and European Parliaments; and led accessible, actionable research about the effects of disinformation on women, minorities, democratic activists, and freedom of expression around the world.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Imagine this: an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods in the midwest. Also imagine that people can be literally haunted by demons, who prey on trauma. Imagine that those two ideas live in the same world, and are woven into a broader story that also manages to hold within it star-crossed romance; biting analysis of the contemporary creative scene in New York City; revealing moments of friendship, community, sex; and ultimately a portrait of what it means to be a trans woman in present-day America—all in about 250 pages.Hopefully your mind is already spinning with possibility—and I’m delighted to inform you that all this and more is what you’ll find in today's guest Grace Byron’s superb debut novel, Herculine. It should go without saying but I’m gonna say it: go buy this book! Link here but it’s available wherever you get books.Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).As a lover of language and narrative, I was excited to dive into all of the above with Grace, and she has lots of great things to say—but of course our conversation extends beyond the craft of writing. We get into a broader examination of the aforementioned topics, further drawing from her work as a critic, especially given the systems of oppression that trans people face, spanning scales local to societal. The best speculative fiction is that which uses the mechanisms of imagination and storytelling to reflect and refract what’s in contemporary society, to help us see messy truths in more nuanced, complex ways. Herculine manages this tremendously, a testament to Grace’s insight and ability to synthesize and translate ideas across forms. These abilities are on full display on our chat.Never fear: this whole conversation is spoiler-free. But as a bonus for paid subscribers, I’ve recorded a whole separate part of the conversation that gest into the nitty gritty, unpacking the book in a way that I believe will be immensely enriching for folks who have already read the book. Note: TONS of spoilers in that conversation. If you want to hear it, be sure to subscribe at realitystudies.co.BIO: Grace Byron is a writer from the Midwest based in Queens whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, The Nation, New York Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Herculine is her debut novel.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Climate change is an issue that already impacts everyone, and is poised to disrupt everything about life as we understand it. And yet it still so often manages to be presented as a niche issue. What gives? Why can’t we get it together?Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).Insert all requisite frustrations about capitalism and billionaires, but glossing the issue that way doesn’t address the broader dynamic in which people—whether as individuals or in communities—are not approaching the scale of the disaster with appropriate urgency and care. Climate change, among other things, is a coordination and communications problem. If we can start to address the underlying assumptions, narratives, and ideas that are perpetuating status quo, I think we’d be surprised how much of a difference that would make in building solidarity and cooperation, to encourage everyday folks to fight for a livable planet in whatever way makes sense given their circumstances.I can spout off about this all day, but Megan is deep in the work—which expresses itself in many forms. She documents and analyzes climate-related events and phenomena as a journalist, writes deft climate fiction that digs into the messiness and nuance of living in a changing planet, advises organizations on telling strategic climate stories through her agency, GreenStory, and creates space for other writers to approach all the above as both a professor and in running the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. Understandably, I was keen to get into it with her, to find out how she’s thinking through these wicked problems, responses to them, and the role that artists and writers can play. As you’ll hear me say in the conversation, I came in with high expectations, and this conversation blew past them. Megan’s insights are absolutely must-listen—especially for creative folks looking to better understand how think about these issues and what they can do.BIO: Megan Mayhew-Bergman is the author of three books, most recently How Strange a Season. Her essays and journalism have been featured in The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Atlantic. She is the Director of Creative Writing at Middlebury College and the Director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She serves on the board of The Thoreau Prize and Conservation Law Foundation, and co-founded GreenStory, a narrative consulting firm for clean energy organizations and NGOs.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
“Collapse” is one of those words that’s bandied about a lot—especially with conversations about the future of the United States and U.S. hegemony—and is therefore prone to debate, misconceptions, and a variety of uses. Today's guest, Luke Kemp is the author of the spectacular and necessary new book, Goliath's Curse. In it, he cuts through the noise to make the case that collapse isn’t just a sensationalist concept or a fringe worry—it’s a recurring feature of history in human societies, a cocktail of human evolutionary psychology and the power of symbolic communication, which allows us to craft stories and ideologies that, among other things, grant particular people the ability to cast themselves as more deserving of finite resources and form dominance hierarchies.Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).Combining empirical research, historical case studies, and contemporary global trends, Luke shows how what he calls goliath fuel—stuff like lootable resources and new technologies—allows for the formation of “goliaths,” a word he uses to sidestep the colonialist implications of “civilization,” going to pains to demonstrate how many of the empires we glamorize today were ruthless and brutal engines of domination. He also shows how these same features, which manifest broadly as systemic inequality, sow the seeds for the fall of these goliaths.I’ll be frank. If you’re looking to understand collapse from a systemic point-of-view, with the most contemporary research available, you have to start with Goliath’s Curse.Grab your copy of Goliath's Curse here!Bio: Luke researches the end of the world. He is a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. He has advised and led foresight studies for multiple international organisations, including the WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity. His work has been covered by media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. He is the author of the bestselling book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
The subjects of degrowth and post-growth are near-and-dear to my heart. I view these overlapping topics as absolutely critical for our continued survival on this planet; it is imperative that we humans bring our species back into alignment with the planet. No doubt that this is going to be difficult and costly, but far less so than continuing on as usual, which will entail ever more extreme measures the longer we put it off—both in terms of paying for disaster responses and implementing mitigation and adaptation measures as the biosphere deteriorates.Which is why I was delighted to see a fellow futurist, today’s guest, Dr. Andy Hines, taking up the topic of changing our relationship to the economy in the form of Imagining After Capitalism. Through his pathbreaking work, Andy has been conducting extensive research in these arenas for more than a decade, and applying the unique capabilities of foresight research to craft scenarios that sketch visions of possibility—in both scary and hopeful directions.Grab your copy of Imagining After Capitalism here!Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).Bio: Dr. Andy Hines is Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight and is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight. His 30+ years of professional futurist experience includes a decade’s experience working inside first the Kellogg Company and later Dow Chemical, and consulting work with Coates & Jarratt, Inc. and Social Technologies/Innovaro. His most recent book (just released) is Imagining After Capitalism. Other books are The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies 2020, Thinking about the Future (2nd edition), Teaching about the Future, ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape, and 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society. His dissertation was “The Role of an Organizational Futurist in Integrating Foresight into Organizations.” He was Founding Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
I’ve talked about AI a good deal in past episodes—and I continue to believe it’s a subject of critical discourse, even (and perhaps especially) as it’s ever more riddled with outstated hype. That’s why you’ll notice I’ve framed today’s conversation in the title as a contrast between large AI models and the little database, a term coined by today’s guest, Danny Snelson—but this conversation is so much more than that. In fact, he wrote a whole book about the subject—and it’s superb.This notion of the little database draws on the lineage of the “little magazine,” a type of publication popular in the second half of the 20th century for cheaply and rapidly distributing written works, especially experimental literature that didn’t quite fit in with existing literary norms. The little database is an archive that similarly embodies this DIY spirit—a curated (though not always too heavy-handedly) digital archive. Just as material realities fostered the possibilities and framed the constraints of little magazines in, say, the 1970s, so too do the material realities of digital media in little databases. The analysis Danny conducts in The Little Database doubles as an examination of how the rise of the web fostered and constrained the media that could circulate—and how and why.A whole lot more in this episode, including games, social justice, the poetics of search, and more!Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).Daniel Scott Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA, where he serves as faculty for the Digital Humanities, the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, and the UCLA Game Lab. His online editorial work can be found at PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. Published books include Elden Poem (Hysterically Real, 2022), Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018), Radios (Make Now, 2016), EXE TXT (Gauss PDF, 2015), Epic Lyric Poem (Troll Thread, 2014), and Inventory Arousal with James Hoff (Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). With Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Avi Alpert, he performs as one-third of the academic performance group Research Service. His recently published book, The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), examines the networked afterlives of media-reflexive works of art and letters in search of contingent methods for reading ordinary digital collections.CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.Amid CDC upheaval under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there's a lot of medical mis- and disinformation flying around—especially about the Covid-19 vaccines. It felt critical to have a conversation with an actual subject matter expert to get to the bottom of it, and Dr. Lucy McBride graciously agreed to join me for this Rapid Response episode on Substack Live.If you want to participate in future Lives, please subscribe to https://www.realitystudies.co/ to stay in the loop.Audio versions of this Rapid Response can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you prefer video, check out the episode on YouTube.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).Dr. Lucy McBride is a practicing internal medicine physician in DC who has been seeing patients for over 20 years. During the pandemic, she became a nationally recognized voice on the importance of addressing mental and physical health. She is the author of the popular medical newsletter, Are You Okay?, now reaching over 36,000 people a week and is the author of a forthcoming book about whole-person health with Simon & Schuster. She hosts a top-rated podcast called Beyond the Prescription where she interviews guests like she does her patients, pulling the curtain back on what it means to be healthy. She has been published in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, USA Today, and has appeared on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour, providing evidence-based medical advice, advocating for a holistic approach to health care, and helping redefine health as more than our cholesterol and weight. Health, she argues, is not an outcome; it's a process. It's not fixed; it's dynamic. It's about awareness of our medical facts, acceptance of the things we cannot control, and agency over what we can change. You can find her on Substack at: https://lucymcbride.substack.com Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
It is well-documented that the polycrisis is intensifying across scales. It’s also well-documented that humanity is not doing nearly enough to preserve the habitability of our planet. It will be demanded of us to engage in extensive mitigation in order to rise to the stakes of this crisis, but mitigation alone isn’t enough. We also have to adapt—in ways across the scales of micro to macro, from a renewed meaning of what we mean when we talk about “the good life” for ourselves, to an overhaul in our collective practices and policies.Earlier this year, today’s guests, Morgan Phillips and Manda Scott—along with former Urgent Futures guest Rupert Read—published an incredible book called Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible, a quick read faces this reality head on. It is a clear guide to the array of transformations that we humans necessarily must undertake if we’re going to make it.The book has been wisely picked up for distribution in the US by Penguin Random House, and is out with all US booksellers now, so these two graciously agreed to sit down for a sort of companion episode to Rupert’s. Given the subject, there’s inevitably some overlap in the conversations, but by and large I see them as complementary, foregrounding Manda’s and Morgan’s respective viewpoints and experiences, for a conversation that gets into everything from relocalization and regenerative agriculture to how folks who get the gravity of the crisis can meaningfully engage with their own confusion, grief, and rage toward healing ends.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Over the weekend, I published a post outlining how Trump’s rebranding of the Department of Defense to the Department of War ties in with a phenomenon known as the "Imperial Boomerang." This is the podcast episode version. If you’d prefer to read the piece, find that here. If you'd prefer to watch, check out the video on YouTube (and subscribe while you're at it! Your support is vital in helping this channel grow).Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans). Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Today’s guest has ideas that are going to be a jolt for many of you. An easy example? His ongoing worldbuilding project, Planet City, which proposes that one response to climate change and biodiversity loss would be to compress the entire future global population of 10 billion people into a contiguous “planet city” roughly the size of the state of Texas—thereby letting the rest of the world rewild. Another? The idea that controversial and likely problematic geoengineering and carbon capture technologies are going to be vital in preserving habitability of life on Earth—at least the life that exists today, including us. As they say, “desperate times call for desperate measures.”Amid cascading crises, art & storytelling must provoke new ways of thinking about the human enterprise. Across his work as an artist, filmmaker, architect, & educator, Liam Young embodies this spirit.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).BIO: Liam Young is a designer, director and BAFTA nominated producer who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. Described by the BBC as "the man designing our futures," his visionary films and speculative worlds are both extraordinary images of tomorrow and urgent examinations of the environmental questions facing us today. As a worldbuilder he visualizes the cities, spaces and props of our imaginary futures for the film and television industry and with his own films he has premiered with platforms ranging from Channel 4, Tribeca, Venice Biennale, the BBC and the Guardian and they have been collected by institutions such as MoMA, Smithsonian, Art Institute of Chicago, SF MoMA, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria amongst many others. In parallel to his work in entertainment he is in demand as one of the worlds foremost futurists consulting on next generation technologies and designs for clients such as Nike, BMW, Google, Sony, Mitsubishi, Wired, Showtime, Microsoft, Ford, NASA JPL, L’Oreal, the Dubai Government, DHL and numerous others. His work is informed by his academic research and has held guest professorships at Princeton University, MIT, and Cambridge and now runs the groundbreaking Masters in Fiction and Entertainment at SCI Arc in Los Angeles. He has published several books including the recent Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post Anthropocene and Planet City, a story of a fictional city for the entire population of the earth.CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! I’m happy to share the video here, as it continues to (unfortunately!) be a subject of critical importance for Internet freedoms. But if you want to participate in the Lives, ask questions of the guests I bring on, etc., do us both a favor and subscribe now and make sure Reality Studies isn’t getting filtered in your inbox. That way you can join me for my next live video in the app:Audio versions of this Rapid Response can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you prefer video, check out the episode on YouTube.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).My guest today is Noelle Perdue.Noelle Perdue is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian with nearly ten years of experience working platform-side for multiple mainstream and independent adult companies. Having written everything from Food Network porn parodies to legally binding terms and conditions, much of her current work explores obscenity law and how pornography’s history can influence our digital and political futures. Noelle’s writing work has been published on Wired, Washington Post, Pornhub, Slate, Brazzers, Input, etc., she’s also been featured as an industry expert on multiple programs including the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and on Netflix's 2023 documentary Money Shot.Perhaps most impressively, Noelle is the first-ever third-timer on the Urgent Futures Podcast! She also runs the excellent Porn World with Noelle Perdue newsletter—so pop over there and subscribe for smart takes on spicy topics! This essay is a great companion piece to the episode, charting what makes age verification laws so fraught:In this Rapid Response episode, we got into all things age verification laws—a wave of legislation spreading across the U.S., Europe, and beyond. These laws, often framed as protecting children online, require platforms to verify a user’s age before allowing access to adult content. But the implementation varies widely: from Louisiana’s driver’s license–based verification to the UK’s repeated attempts at a national age-check system, to France’s ongoing court battles over platform compliance.Supporters see them as necessary guardrails in an age of ubiquitous digital media, especially with regard to “protecting minors” from “harmful” content. Critics (like Noelle and myself) argue these measures threaten user privacy, create massive data-collection risks, and risk handing governments or private companies unprecedented power over what people can see online.While this might seem like an isolated issue in the adult industry, it’s anything but; age verification have become a frontline issue in the larger fight over Internet freedoms, online anonymity, and the future of digital rights. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
What language should we use for our experience of the technological? There’s so much chatter about AI, and yet so often it’s framed by a language inherited from science and technology. Given technology’s cultural and societal implications, we need thoughtful folks in the arts and humanities creating linguistic interventions and modes of understandingWhich is why I was so delighted to host Nora—a writer, critic, curator, and educator whose work moves fluidly across fields to make sense of how technology reshapes culture, thought, and possibility. She’s one of the sharpest interpreters of algorithmic systems and the ways they mediate reality, but what makes her writing distinct is that it’s also deeply imaginative, poetic, and alive to the weird, the magical, the un- and not-yet-articulated.So, after a long summer hiatus, I'm thrilled to bring Urgent Futures roaring back with this illuminating conversation with Nora Khan.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).BIO: Nora N. Khan is an independent critic, essayist, curator, and educator based in Los Angeles, where last year she served as Arts Council Professor at UCLA in Design Media Arts. Her writing on philosophy of AI and emerging technologies is referenced heavily across fields. Formally, this work attempts to theorize the limits of algorithmic knowledge and locate computation’s influence on critical language. Her books are AI Art and the Stakes for Art Criticism (2025), Seeing, Naming, Knowing (2019) and Fear Indexing the X-Files (2017), with Steven Warwick. She is a member of the Curatorial Ensemble of the 2026 edition of Counterpublic, one of the nation’s largest public civic exhibitions, focused next on ‘Near Futures’. She was the Co-Curator with Andrea Bellini of the Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement 2024, A Cosmic Movie Camera, hosted by Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, and also curated Manual Override at The Shed (2020).CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
I’ve been called a prepper more times over the past few weeks than I have in my entire life. In this Rapid Response episode, I want to explain why. And moreover, I want to explain why I believe we should appropriate, normalize, and broaden the notion of prepping.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).Relevant links from the show:- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/resilience-faq- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/what-is-resilience-climate-resilience-explained- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/psychological-resilience-explained-counseling-cbt-narrative-therapy-emdr- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/climate-resilience-guideFind video versions of Urgent Futures episodes at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Once upon a time, the Internet was heralded as a great open space, the utopian dream of free information flow. Obviously those ideas were misguided (at best); the Internet we experience today is a far cry from what Silicon Valley promised us. What went wrong?Today’s guest argues that it's because we’ve boxed ourselves—or maybe more accurately, been boxed into—platforms.The Internet as we understand it is dominated by platforms; in large part they define the logic of digital life. So what can we do about it? Listen on...Get your copy of Against Platforms here!Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).Mike Pepi is a writer and critic exploring the intersection of technology, culture, and politics. His work has appeared in e-flux, Frieze, Art in America, Spike and other publications, where he interrogates the ideologies behind digital tools and cultural production. He is the author of Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia (Melville House, 2025).CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
As soon as the cost of renewable energy drops to or below fossil fuel levels, we'll easily make the transition away from fossil fuels, right?...Unfortunately, that's just not how things are playing out in practice. Even though wind and solar energy have seen remarkable innovation and rollouts around the world, fossil fuels remain dominant. What gives?Today's guest, Brett Christophers, believes it's because we've gotten it twisted: under the complex, capitalistic infrastructures that define the energy economy, it's not cost that matters—it's price. In fact, he wrote a whole book about it: The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet—which is the focus of our conversation today.Get your copy of The Price is Wrong here!Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).Brett Christophers is professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research. He is the author of 10 books, including Our Lives in Their Portfolios, Rentier Capitalism, The New Enclosure, and most recently, The Price is Wrong. Christophers is one of the world’s most influential geographers. Recognized for his work on land privatization, the growth of rentier capitalism, the role of asset managers in owning housing and other essential infrastructures—and the political economy of climate change and the energy transition—he has written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Washington Post, among many others.CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe
Bit of a different episode this week! It’s a recording of my Substack Live with Better Future w/ Michael Mezz, where we dive into all the topics listed in the title, plus a few surprises.It was a fun little experiment that ends up packing a punch—all thanks to Michael’s ability to sensemake such volatile, complex topics. He’s also a past guest of the show, and our conversation is a fantastic introduction to degrowth and post-growth economics (which we need to be considering now more than ever).Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.Back with new full episodes next week!Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe