Douglas Rushkoff
442 episodes listed below
Human stakes inside technological power.
Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff is a conversation series about the systems people build and the lives those systems shape. Its best moments move from AI, fascism, religion, art, or capitalism into the practical question of how people stay connected, ethical, and awake.
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Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff is a show about what happens when systems built for scale collide with bodies, communities, memory, and conscience. It sounds like a conversation that has refused to become a briefing. Episodes often begin with a big frame: fascism, AI safety, spiritual disenchantment, late-stage capitalism, religious conflict, or the tech elite’s dream of a frictionless world. Then the show narrows the lens. A work of art teaches people to see the humanity of someone previously excluded. A non-consensual sexual material site turns lack of consent into its entire concept. A rabbi’s grief becomes a way to ask what happens when a tradition is fused to war and killing. The movement is from abstraction to consequence, then back again.
Rushkoff’s presence gives the show its shape. He can be earnest about sacredness, play, and collective creativity, while still sounding skeptical of inflated promises from platforms, billionaires, institutions, and ideologies. The show is willing to talk about AI as harm, as fantasy, and as a possible tool, sometimes in the same episode. That tension matters. A monologue about using Claude to rebuild a personal website becomes a question about whether small, transparent tools can model a different internet, or whether that hope is another mirage.
The interviews are patient. Brian Eno’s discussion of art turns into a meditation on empathy and moral recognition. Kat Tenbarge’s reporting on AI-generated sexual material grounds the safety debate in consent, reputation, and everyday targets. Jeffrey Kripal’s appearance pushes against a flattened version of reality that leaves out visions, altered states, and the strange parts of human history. Grant Morrison’s episode brings occult language into the show’s larger concern with the stories and symbols that organize power.
Team Human is not neutral in the bland sense. It is curious, politically awake, and openly concerned with dignity. The show suits listeners who want technology criticism, media theory, spiritual argument, and democratic anxiety in one unrushed place. Its strongest episodes do not simply ask what is broken. They ask what kind of human beings a system trains people to become.
Made for: For listeners who like conversations where media theory, politics, spirituality, art, and technology meet concrete human consequences. It fits people who want critique without cynicism and moral seriousness without slogans.
What sets it apart: Team Human stands apart by treating AI, capitalism, religion, and art as lived social forces rather than isolated topics. The show keeps asking what each system does to empathy, agency, consent, and community.
Douglas Rushkoff sits down with scientists, activists, artists, philosophers, and researchers asking the same question: who actually benefits from the way we've built this world — and what do we do about it? Team Human is a weekly podcast about technology, power, consciousness, and what it means to stay human in a world that increasingly doesn't seem designed for us. No corporate backing. No network. No algorithm deciding what gets said. Just honest, rigorous conversation with people working at the edges of the most important questions of our time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Team Human connects technology to power by tracing how digital systems shape political argument, personal harm and the choices still available to people.
Douglas Rushkoff treats technology as a political arrangement, then asks who gains power from it and what happens to everyone living downstream.
Douglas Rushkoff makes tech optimism defend itself before you let it reorganize the furniture.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp look at synthetic media, consent, and the real-world harm that follows.
This episode frames a familiar Team Human concern: fantasies in the machine can spill into violence on the ground. It then settles into a focused critique of synthetic media, consent, and the harm that follows when non-consensual material is treated like a business opportunity.
A careful case for judging AI by what it can do, and what it quietly costs.
Rushkoff treats AI less like a finished product than a practical test of purpose and price. He describes using Claude to rebuild his website, with a searchable archive, a changeable editor, embedded media, and a theme menu, and says the job took about five hours instead of a…
A political conversation about social obligation, blame, and the moral story behind public life.
Douglas Rushkoff and Jonathan Larson shape the conversation around a blunt question: what does a society owe people who are left without housing, medical security, or any real way out?
A patient, strange conversation about time, certainty, and the edges of consciousness.
This episode moves through a patient conversation about mystical experience, precognition, synchronicity, UFOs, ESP, and the idea that some uncanny moments may also be temporal, as if the future can press back on the present. It lingers on Philip K.
A clear reading of power, fear, and political permission that connects race, media, and authoritarian style.
The episode frames consolidated power as something fed by fear, then ties that idea to race, media, and the permission structures around Trump.
Pathfinder chaos with a crooked grin.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews Brian Eno about his new book 'What Is Art For?' and explores how imagination and collective creativity can counter fascism.
Team Human host Douglas Rushkoff interviews investigative journalist Kat Tenbarge, founder of the reader-funded Spitfire News newsletter, about the opaque funding networks behind the AI safety movement, deepfake pornography platforms, and the escalating harassment of independent journalists.
Rushkoff starts with a practical confession.
This episode features a conversation with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff exploring why 'leveling down' might be an effective strategy for navigating late-stage capitalism and restoring human and planetary relationships.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews Jeffrey Kripal about reclaiming the fantastic and impossible aspects of human experience, such as visions and altered states, to counter the de-souling effects of academic and scientific materialism.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses emotional calls from rabbis grappling with the impact of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Jewish identity and religion's viability.
Douglas Rushkoff introduces an episode featuring Grant Morrison discussing how occult power is being wielded by humanity's enemies and the potential for conscious intervention to reshape reality.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews thinkers about who benefits from our technological world and how to stay human.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews Professor Shira Chess about the occult and magical thinking in digital culture.
This episode explores what the Jeffrey Epstein files reveal about broader societal issues and human behavior, framed within Douglas Rushkoff's Team Human podcast about conscious intervention in modern systems.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews thinkers about who benefits from our technological world and how to stay human.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews occult historian Mitch Horowitz for an annual esoteric evaluation of the State of the Union, exploring themes of magic, will, and conscious intervention in society.
The argument begins with everyday suffering.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews thinkers about who benefits from our technological world and how to stay human.
The weird has teeth here.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews thinkers about who benefits from modern technology and how to stay human.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews thinkers about who benefits from our technological world and how to stay human.
Douglas Rushkoff promotes Kobe dryer sheets as a critique of capitalism and introduces a conversation about mutual aid with Tom Llewellyn.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses AI storytelling as a form of social practice and activist imagination with Ari Kushner.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses the benefits of Kobe dryer sheets and introduces the show's exploration of magic, spirituality, and human agency.
Douglas Rushkoff and Vicky Robyn discuss the importance of human connection and conscious intervention in a technology-driven world, with a humorous ad for ethical dryer sheets.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews Jeremy Lent about the patterns of thought leading to civilization's sustainability crisis and how to develop new ones.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses technology, power, and staying human with guests, opening with a satirical ad for ethical dryer sheets.
Douglas Rushkoff delivers a monologue promoting Kobe dryer sheets while critiquing wealth inequality and the machine of capitalism.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews guests about technology, power, and staying human in a world not designed for us.
Consolidated power has a psyche.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews Corey Doctorow about his book 'Enshitification' and the need for conscious intervention in a tech-driven world.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses the societal impact of technology and the need for conscious human intervention.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses societal collapse and the transition from monopolist society to collectivism with Luke Kemp.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses AI and the need for conscious intervention with computer scientist Nate Soros.
Douglas Rushkoff and Jonathan Larson discuss current events and media chaos with critical perspective.
The host introduces a biodegradable dryer sheet sponsor before transitioning to discuss his guest R.U.
Douglas Rushkoff interviews Camille Sojit Pejcha about the intersection of sex and capitalism, exploring topics like ethical dating, pleasure as subversion, and future trends in sexuality.
Douglas Rushkoff hosts Alex Kazemi at The Strand Bookstore to discuss counterculture refuge and Kazemi's new book, The New Millennium Boys, in the context of a hostile 2025 economy.
Douglas Rushkoff discusses breaking the fascistic state of mind and the importance of conscious intervention in a machine-driven world.