Long Now
Episodes
David Byrne: Good News & Sleeping Beauties
21 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Byrne has become a scholar and promoter of new good ideas that work in the world. He finds them in health, education, culture, economics, clima...
Brian Behlendorf: A Foundation of Trust: Building a Blockchain Future
07 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
An Open Source pioneer, [Brian Behlendorf](https://twitter.com/brianbehlendorf) now leads the effort to build the infrastructure for trust as a servic...
Judy Wajcman: Time Poverty Amidst Digital Abundance
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Technology’s promise is to “save” time. Its track record in real and psychological terms is often the opposite. A sociologist of science and tec...
Ian McEwan: Machines Like Me
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his new novel, _[_Machines Like Me_](https://smile.amazon.com/Machines-Like-Me-Ian-McEwan/dp/0385545118/ref=sr_1_1)_, Ian McEwan uses science ficti...
Elizabeth Lonsdorf: Growing Up Ape: The Long-term Science of Studying Our Closest Living Relatives
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Studying primates offers insight into human evolution and behavior. Primatologist Elizabeth Lonsdorf shares her ongoing work with wild chimpanzees and...
Maya Tudor: Can Nationalism be a Resource for Democracy?
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A political scientist examines how foundational nationalisms affect democracy globally, using countries like India and Myanmar to illustrate that some...
Alexander Rose, Kevin Kelly, & Stewart Brand: Siberia: A Journey to the Mammoth Steppe
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In August of 02018, Long Now founder Stewart Brand, renowned geneticist George Church, and a delegation of observers and scientists traveled to one of...
Christopher Bryan: The Evolving Science of Behavior Change
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Human civilization is used to being saved by technology. The 20th century was defined by humanity’s ability to invent a pill, vaccine, or device to ...
Hannu Rajaniemi: The Spirit Singularity: Science and the Afterlife at the Turn of the 20th Century
10 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scifi author, scientist, and entrepreneur Hannu Rajaniemi discusses the real life late Victorian attempts to map the afterlife which inspired _Summerl...
Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The ocean is not just filling up, it’s swelling up. Half of sea-level rise comes just from the warming of the water. No matter what humans do next, ...
James Holland Jones: The Science of Climate Fiction: Can Stories Lead to Social Action?
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The warming planet is increasingly the subject of all kinds of fiction. Beyond entertainment or distraction could climate fiction (“Cli-Fi”) actua...
Ed Lu: Charting the High Frontier of Space
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout human history, mapping has been the key to the opening of new frontiers. Mapping of previously uncharted regions has enabled economic expan...
Chip Conley: The Modern Elder and the Intergenerational Workplace
20 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What can fifty-somethings bring of value to companies that are mostly twenty-somethings, and vice versa? A needed blending of depth with currency. Ch...
John Brockman: Possible Minds
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Brockman's newly released book [_Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI_](https://smile.amazon.com/Possible-Minds-Twenty-Five-Ways-Loo...
Martin Rees: Prospects for Humanity
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously. Nobody has managed that better than Martin Rees in hi...
Stewart Brand: Whole Earth Catalog 50th Anniversary Celebration
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
50 years ago, Stewart Brand launched the Whole Earth Catalog — one of the cornerstones of the American counterculture. The evening program of The W...
Niall Ferguson: Networks and Power
13 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“This time is different.” Historians: “Ha.” “The Net is net beneficial.” Historian Niall Ferguson: “Globalization is in crisis. Popul...
Mary Lou Jepsen: Toward Practical Telepathy
05 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With her stunning breakthroughs in neural imaging, Mary Lou Jepsen is making the brain readable (and stimulatable) in real time. That will revolutioni...
Julia Galef: Soldiers and Scouts: Why our minds weren't built for truth, and how we can change that
19 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An expert on rationality, judgement, and strategy, Julia Galef notes that "our capacity for reason evolved to serve two very different purposes that a...
Juan Benet: Long Term Info-structure
15 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"We live in a spectacular time,” says Juan Benet. "We're a century into our computing phase transition. The latest stages have created astonishing p...
Shahzeen Attari: Facts, Feelings and Stories: How to Motivate Action on Climate Change
15 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An environmental researcher examines perceptions of energy use & conservation and asks how we can inspire behavioral change and policy support in indi...
George P. Shultz: Perspective
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Perspective? No one has a longer or better-informed view of world affairs and America's role than George Shultz, now 97. (Henry Kissinger is only 95.)...
Chris D. Thomas: Are We Initiating The Great Anthropocene Speciation Event?
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The bad news (not news to most): Many wild species are under severe duress. The good news (total news to most): “Nature is thriving in an age of ex...
Benjamin Grant: Overview: Earth and Civilization in the Macroscope
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Civilization is both astonishing and astonishingly various when viewed from slightly above. Not so far above as to be lost in planetary context, but j...
Kishore Mahbubani: Has the West Lost It? Can Asia Save It?
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Kishore Mahbubani’s view, global power is shifting from the West to the Rest—from Europe and North America to Asia and Africa. He argues that c...
Margaret Levi: The Organized Pursuit of Knowledge
18 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The human quest to understand our world continues. The Director of Stanford’s [Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)](http:...
Steven Pinker: A New Enlightenment
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
## Making the world better **Much of Pinker’s talk** was devoted to showing how most of the things than humans care about (except climate) have bee...
Michael Frachetti: Open Source Civilization and the Unexpected Origins of the Silk Road
09 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Travel the ancient Silk Road with an archaeologist researching a revolutionary idea. Nomadic pastoralists, far from being irrelevant outliers, may ha...
Mike Kuniavsky: Our Future in Algorithm Farming
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Everything will be connected to the network, even things that shouldn’t be. From automobiles to egg timers, Kuniavsky explains all these devices wil...
James Nestor: Humanity and the Deep Ocean
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In _[DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells us about Ourselves](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Freediving-Renegade-Science-Ourselve...
Charles C. Mann: The Wizard and the Prophet
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
## Two ways to save humanity **Mann titled his talk “The Edge of the Petri Dish.”** He explained, “If you drop a couple protozoa in a Petri dis...
Louis Hyman: The New Deal You Don't Know
02 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Louis Hyman's work focuses on the history of American capitalism. In his book _[Borrow: The American Way of Debt](https://www.amazon.com/Bor...
Elena Bennett: Seeds of a Good Anthropocene
29 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As humans increasingly dominate Earth’s natural systems over the coming centuries (“the Anthropocene”), how can we ensure that it becomes a “g...
Nathaniel Persily: Can Democracy Survive the Internet?
07 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Internet was once seen as a democratizing force, but today social media platforms have become exploitable intermediaries of political discourse. H...
Rose McDermott: Ideology in our Genes: The Biological Basis for Political Traits
01 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
While traditionally social factors have been considered to have primary influence on political behaviors and preferences, more recent research shows t...
Renee Wegrzyn: Engineering Gene Safety
20 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Genome editing technologies provide the unprecedented ability to modify genetic material in a manner that is targeted, rapid, adaptable, and broadly a...
Jason Scott: The Web In An Eye Blink
01 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Scott is an activist archiver who preserves artifacts of digital culture for the future. Users today have many ways to create content online, bu...
The Refugee Reality: Thinking Long-term About the Evolving Global Challenge
01 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
With a complex and truly global problem like this, we can only scratch the surface in an hour. But we hoped to reframe some aspects and include perspe...
David Grinspoon: Earth in Human Hands
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Cognitive planet **Thanks to the growing human domination** of natural systems on Earth, people say we are entering an Anthropocene Epoch, Grinspo...
Nicky Case: Seeing Whole Systems
17 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
### How to finesse complexity **HE BEGAN, “Hi, I’m Nicky Case, and I explain complex systems in a visual, tangible, and playful way.”** He did ...
Carolyn Porco: Searching for Life in the Solar System
10 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Life nearby **If we find, anywhere in the universe, one more instance of life** besides what evolved on Earth, then we are bound to conclude that ...
Kim Stanley Robinson: How Climate Will Evolve Government and Society
01 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Humanity’s adaptation to climate change will require novel, global cooperation and societal evolution. The award-winning science fiction author of _...
Kara Platoni: Transforming Perception, One Sense at a Time
03 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kara Platoni, author and journalism professor at UC-Berkeley, set out to find the sensory pioneers who are changing the way we experience the world. H...
James Gleick: Time Travel
26 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Time travel is time research **Gleick began with H.G. Wells’s 1895 book _The Time Machine_** , which created the idea of time travel. It soon be...
Jeffrey McGrew: Talking with Robots about Architecture
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The co-founder of Because We Can, the architecture/design firm that designed The Interval at Long Now, discusses the future of building: automation, c...
Adam Rogers: Proof: The Science of Booze
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The first salon talk took place before The Interval was officially opened, when the back bar and much of our signature decor weren’t fully installed...
Andy Weir: The Red Planet for Real
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Before Andy Weir's self-published novel _The Martian_ became a _New York Times_ bestseller and a blockbuster film, it began as a series of blog posts....
Abby Smith Rumsey: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Memory technologies from papyrus to print have given humans a unique survival advantage: allowing us to accumulate knowledge. These technologies shape...
Paul Saffo & Stewart Brand: Pace Layers Thinking
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1999 “Pace Layers” made its debut in the book [The Clock of Long Now](http://www.amazon.com/Clock-Long-Now-Responsibility-Computer/dp/046500780...
Neal Stephenson: Seveneves at The Interval
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Author Neal Stephenson has had a long though informal connection with Long Now. Before the foundation was formed, soon after Danny Hillis began to con...
Geoffrey B West: The Universal Laws of Growth and Pace
24 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Why cities live forever **West focussed on cities** in his discussion of the newly discovered exponential scaling laws that govern everything aliv...
Frank Ostaseski: What the Dying Teach the Living
11 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Death’s Honesty **In one of Long Now’s most moving talks** , Ostaseski began: “I’m not romantic about dying. This is the hardest work you ...
Bjorn Lomborg: From Feel-Good to High-Yield Good: How to Improve Philanthropy and Aid
14 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Doing Good Better [](https://media.longnow.org/files/2/lomborghaiti.jpg) **Lomborg ope...
Jennifer Pahlka: Fixing Government: Bottom Up and Outside In
02 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Toward agile government Pahlka quoted: “Efficiency in government is a matter of social justice.” (Mayor John Norquist) It is at the often madd...
Steven Johnson: Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
05 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
## Inventing toward delight Humanity has been inventing toward delight for a long time. Johnson began with a slide of shell beads found in Morocco th...
Douglas Coupland: The Extreme Present
02 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### Future now **“The present and the future** now coexist at the same time,” Coupland began. “It’s why time doesn’t feel like time any mor...
David Eagleman: The Brain and The Now
05 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### The Brain’s Now Our perception of time raises all sorts of questions, Eagleman began. “Why does time seem to slow down when you’re scared? ...
Jonathan Rose: The Well Tempered City
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### Coherent cities What holds a city together? Rose noted that the earliest cities were built around a temple and the spirituality it embodied. As t...
Seth Lloyd: Quantum Computer Reality
10 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### Quantum Computer Reality The 15th-century Renaissance was triggered, Lloyd began, by a flood of new information which changed how people thought ...
Kevin Kelly: The Next 30 Digital Years
15 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
## Digital is just getting started In Kevin Kelly’s view, a dozen “inevitable” trends will drive the next 30 years of digital progress. Artific...
Brian Christian: Algorithms to Live By
21 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### Solving hard decisions Deciding when to stop your quest for the ideal apartment, or ideal spouse, depends entirely on how long you expect to be l...
Walter Mischel: The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control
03 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### Thinking hot and cool **In the 1960s, Mischel** and colleagues at Stanford launched a series of delayed-gratification experiments with young chil...
Priyamvada Natarajan: Solving Dark Matter and Dark Energy
12 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
## The darkness of dark matter and dark energy ALL THAT WE KNOW of the universe we get from observing photons, Natarajan pointed out. But dark matter...
Jane Langdale: Radical Ag: C4 Rice and Beyond
15 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
## Revolutionary rice Feeding the world (and saving nature) in this populous century, Jane Langdale began, depends entirely on agricultural efficienc...
Stephen Pyne: Fire Slow, Fire Fast, Fire Deep
10 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### Ecological wildfire “We are uniquely fire creatures,” Pyne began, “on a uniquely fire planet.” Life itself is a form of slow metabolic co...
Eric Cline: 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed
12 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
### When chaos overwhelmed civilization Archaeologist Cline began by declaring that the time he would most like to be transported to is the Late Bron...
Philip Tetlock: Superforecasting
24 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
### All it takes to improve forecasting is KEEP SCORE Will Syria’s President Assad still be in power at the end of next year? Will Russia and China...
James Fallows: Civilization's Infrastructure
07 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
### Infrastructure investment tricks All societies under-invest in their infrastructure—in the systems that allow them to thrive. There is hardware...
Saul Griffith: Infrastructure and Climate Change
22 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
## Green infrastructure Griffith began with an eyeroll at the first round of responses in the US to reducing greenhouse gases, a program he calls ...
Sara Seager: Other Earths. Other Life.
11 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
## To find living exoplanets Thanks to recent exoplanet research, Seager began, we now know that nearly all of our galaxy’s 300 billion stars are a...
Ramez Naam: Enhancing Humans, Advancing Humanity
23 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
### Enhancing humans and humanity Beginning with the accelerating pace of biotech tools for human health and enhancement, Naam noted that health issu...
Neil Gaiman: How Stories Last
10 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
## How stories last Stories are alive. The ones that last, Gaiman said, outcompete other stories by changing over time. They make it from medium to m...
Beth Shapiro: How to Clone a Mammoth
12 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
## De-extinction science When people hear about “ancient DNA” in fossils, Shapiro began, the first question always is “Can we clone a dinosaur?...
Michael Shermer: The Long Arc of Moral Progress
15 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
## Moral Progress Shermer began with Martin Luther King’s statement in Selma, March 1965: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends to...
Jonathon Keats: Envisioning Deep Time
08 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophical inquiry and scientific absurdism meet in the conceptual precision and ice dry wit of Jonathon Keats. In his talk at The Interval, Keats ...
Paul Saffo: The Creator Economy
01 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
### The Creator Economy Media innovations drive economic shifts, Saffo began. “We invent new technology and then use it to reinvent ourselves.” ...
David Keith: Patient Geoengineering
18 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
## Practical geoengineering “Temporary, moderate, and responsive” should be the guidelines of responsible geoengineering, in David Keith’s view...
Jesse Ausubel: Nature is Rebounding
14 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
### Why nature is rebounding Over the last 40 years, in nearly every field, human productivity has _decoupled_ from resource use, Ausubel began. Even...
Kevin Kelly: Technium Unbound
13 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
## Holos Rising When Kevin Kelly looked up the definition of “superorganism” on Wikipedia, he found this: “A collection of agents which can act...
Larry Harvey: Why The Man Keeps Burning
21 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
## The Hundred Year Burn "Burning Man is like one of those birthday candles you can’t blow out,” observed Burning Man’s primary founder and Chi...
Drew Endy: The iGEM Revolution
17 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
## Massively collaborative synthetic biology Natural genomes are nearly impossible to figure out, Endy began, because they were evolved, not designed...
Anne Neuberger: Inside the NSA
07 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
## The NSA reaches out Of her eight great-grandparents, seven were murdered at Auschwitz. “So my family’s history burned into me a fear of what o...
Adrian Hon: A History of the Future in 100 Objects
17 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
### Future artifacts Speaking from 02082, Hon described 5 (of 100) objects and events from this century’s history he felt most strongly evoked the ...
Stefan Kröpelin: Civilization’s Mysterious Desert Cradle
11 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
### The Sahara and civilization “Almost everything breaks in the desert,” Kröpelin began. He showed trucks mired in sand, one vehicle blown up b...
Sylvia Earle & Tierney Thys: Oceanic
21 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
### Oceans alive Neither of them eats fish. Both marine biologists applaud the improved regulation of American fishing and the resulting recovery of...
Tony Hsieh: Helping Revitalize a City
23 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
### The downtown company The business advice that Tony Hsieh most took to heart came from an ad executive: “A great brand is a story that never sto...
Mariana Mazzucato: The Entrepreneurial State
25 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
### Government as radical, patient VC The iPhone, Mazzucato pointed out, is held up as a classic example of world-changing innovation coming from bus...
Danny Hillis & Brian Eno: The Long Now, now
22 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
### Make the next legal U-turn "Bitching Betty," they call the robotic voice of the car’s GPS guidance system. Eno and Hillis, on their road trips,...
Richard Kurin: American History in 101 Objects
19 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### American objects Figuratively holding up one museum item after another, Kurin spun tales from them. (The Smithsonian has 137 million objects; he ...
Adam Steltzner: Beyond Mars, Earth
16 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### Mighty daring on Mars Engineer Steltzner took his rapt audience striding with him through the wrong solutions for landing a one-ton rover on Mars...
Peter Schwartz: The Starships ARE Coming
18 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### Starship destiny We now know, Schwartz began, that nearly all of the billions of stars in our galaxy have planets. If we can master interstellar ...
Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow
14 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### On taking thought Before a packed house, Kahneman began with the distinction between what he calls mental “System 1”---fast thinking, intuiti...
Craig Childs: Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth
30 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### How the world keeps ending “This Earth is a story teller,” Childs began. “And it is not a stable place to live. It is always ending. We thi...
Ed Lu: Anthropocene Astronomy: Thwarting Dangerous Asteroids Begins with Finding Them
19 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### The last killer asteroid Kevin Kelly wrote the following about Ed Lu’s Seminar About Long-term Thinking (SALT) titled “Anthropocene Astronomy...
Stewart Brand: Reviving Extinct Species
22 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### De-extinction begins The new tools of synthetic biology, I began, are about to liberate conservation in a spectacular way. It is becoming possibl...
Nicholas Negroponte: Beyond Digital
18 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### A world of convergence In education, Negroponte explained, there’s a fundamental distinction between "instructionism" and "constructionism." "C...
George Dyson: No Time Is There
20 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### The digital big bang When the digital universe began, in 1951 in New Jersey, it was just 5 kilobytes in size. "That's just half a second of MP3 a...
Chris Anderson: The Makers Revolution
20 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### Desktop manufacturing changes world We’re now entering the third industrial revolution, Anderson said. The first one, which began with the spin...
Terry Hunt & Carl Lipo: The Statues Walked -- What Really Happened on Easter Island
18 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
### Easter Island reconsidered In the most isolated place on Earth a tiny society built world-class monuments. Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is 1,000 mile...
Peter Warshall: Enchanted by the Sun
29 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
### Light and beauty “The naturalist’s task,” Warshall began, “is to observe without human-centered thoughts and human-centered agendas, to o...