Long Now: Conversations at The Interval
Media & Entertainment Podcasts
A long-term thinking lecture series from The Long Now Foundation: these hour long talks are recorded live at The Interval, our bar / cafe / museum in San Francisco. Since 02014 this series has presented artists, authors, entrepreneurs, scientists (and more) taking a long-term perspective on subjects like art, design, history, nature, technology, and time. You can learn more about The Interval and this series at theinterval.org, where we have full videos of the talks on this podcast.
Location:
United States
Description:
A long-term thinking lecture series from The Long Now Foundation: these hour long talks are recorded live at The Interval, our bar / cafe / museum in San Francisco. Since 02014 this series has presented artists, authors, entrepreneurs, scientists (and more) taking a long-term perspective on subjects like art, design, history, nature, technology, and time. You can learn more about The Interval and this series at theinterval.org, where we have full videos of the talks on this podcast.
Twitter:
@longnow
Language:
English
Episodes
Psychedelics: History at the Crossroads: Ismail Ali
3/21/2023
Psychedelics and other mind-altering substances have been used for thousands of years across the world in religious, spiritual, celebratory, and healing contexts. Despite a half century of a "War on Drugs" in the United States, there has been a recent resurgence in public interest in ending drug prohibition and re-evaluating the roles these substances can play in modern society. What can our several-thousand year history with these substances teach us about how they can be used in a modern...
Duration:00:58:02
How to Invent Everything: Ryan North
2/28/2023
How would someone fare if they were dropped into a randomly chosen period in history? Would they have any relevant knowledge to share, or ability to invent crucial technologies given the period's constraints? Ryan North uses these hypothetical questions to explore the technological and implicit knowledge underpinning modern civilization, offering a practical guide of how one could rebuild civilization from the ground up.
Duration:01:04:45
Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Foster Resilience and Co-create the Cities We Need: Johanna Hoffman
1/20/2023
Urbanist, researcher and writer Johanna Hoffman joins us to talk about speculative futures -- a powerful set of tools that can reorient urban development help us dream and build more resilient, equitable cities. Navigating modern change depends on imagining futures we’ve never seen. Urban planning and design should be well positioned to spearhead that work, but calculated rationale often results in urban spaces crafted to mitigate threats rather than navigate the unexpected, leaving cities...
Duration:00:56:49
Drinking for 10,000 Years: Intoxication and Civilization: Edward Slingerland
7/25/2022
See the full description of this talk on our new website: Edward Slingerland, "Drinking for 10,000 Years: Intoxication and Civilization".
Duration:01:05:39
Space Debris and The Kessler Syndrome: A Possible Future Trapped on Earth: Creon Levit
6/14/2022
More than one hundred million pieces of human-made space debris currently orbit our planet, most moving at more than 10,000 mph. Every year their number increases, creating a progressively more dangerous environment for working spacecraft. In order to operate in space, we track most of this debris through a patchwork of private efforts and government defense networks. Creon Levit spent over three decades at NASA, and is now the Director of R&D at Planet, a company that is imaging the earth...
Duration:00:55:54
What’s The Future? It’s Up to Us.: Tim O'Reilly
3/4/2021
Based on four decades in technology and media, constantly in the eye of innovation, O’Reilly is starting vital conversations about our future. Be ready for keen details on how we got here, a frank assessment of emerging challenges, and a bold call to action for the sake of the generations on the horizon. Tim O’Reilly is founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc. If you’ve heard the term “open source software” or “web 2.0” or “the Maker movement” or “government as a platform” or “the WTF...
Duration:01:09:32
The History & Science of a Persistent Malady: Scurvy Salon
1/29/2021
A special night of short talks about the long history and scientific background behind a most persistent malady. And the drinks that can help keep it at bay. Featuring returning Interval speakers James Holland Jones (Stanford), James Nestor (Deep), Kara Platoni (We Have the Technology), The Interval’s Beverage Director: Jennifer Colliau, and more.
Duration:01:04:49
Bay Area Telecommunications Infrastructure History: Rick Prelinger
1/19/2021
Rick Prelinger uncovers the diverse histories of Bay Area telecommunications infrastructure: telephone, radio, television, data, image and sound. A tour of technologies, dead and flourishing, that overlay, underlay and penetrate us all.
Duration:01:01:27
The Geological Reveal: How the Rock Record Shows Our Relationship to the Natural World: Miles Traer
12/18/2020
Before us, after us, and without our realizing it: geology, ecology, and biology uniquely record human activity. Geoscientist Miles Traer, co-host of the podcast Generation Anthropocene uncovers the many “natures" of the San Francisco Bay Area that exist beneath our feet.
Duration:01:06:18
Art Thinking + Technology: A Personal Journey of Expanding Space and Time: Scott Kildall
9/25/2020
What place is there for art in the 21st century world of technology, business, and science? Everywhere. Award-winning cross-disciplinary artist and current SETI artist-in-residence Scott Kildall discusses collaborating with scientists, technologists, and others. He'll share his work and explain the vital role for Art Thinking as a tool that offers perspective in a dynamic, fast-moving world. Scott Kildall is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work includes writing algorithms that transform...
Adapting to Sea Level Rise: The Science of New York 2140: Kim Stanley Robinson
7/17/2020
Legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson returns to The Interval to discuss his just released novel New York 2140. Robinson will discuss how starting from the most up to date climate science available to him, he derived a portrait of New York City as "super-Venice" and the resilient civilization that inhabits it in his novel. In 02016 Robinson spoke at The Interval about the economic ideas that inform New York 2140. He will be joined by futurist Peter Schwartz in conversation...
Duration:01:04:27
Science Needs Fiction: Annalee Newitz
7/13/2020
Science fiction does more than predict future inventions. Stories are a testbed for exploring the unexpected ways people could incorporate technology into their cultures. Science journalist and novelist Annalee Newitz will discuss how scientists, innovators, and the rest of us benefit from the crucible of imaginative fictions. Annalee is the author of the bestselling novel Autonomous. Her nonfiction book Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was a finalist...
Duration:01:12:30
Sometimes Brilliant in Conversation with Stewart Brand: Larry Brilliant
6/29/2020
From 01960s political protests to successfully eradicating smallpox, Brilliant recalls his long, strange trips around a changing world. His personal stories include icons of the last century from Steve Jobs to MLK to the Grateful Dead. Recollections of a visionary physician, technologist, and seeker, in conversation with Long Now's Stewart Brand with whom Dr. Brilliant founded The Well online community in 01985.
Duration:01:02:31
Coding Ourselves/Coding Others: D. Fox Harrell
6/11/2020
Through building and analyzing systems, D. Fox Harrell's research investigates how the computer can be used to express cultural meanings through data-structures and algorithms. In his talk he showed that identities are complicated by their intersection with technologies like social networking, gaming, and virtual worlds. Data-structures and algorithms in video games and social media can perpetuate persistent issues of class, gender, sex, race, and ethnicity. They also create dynamic...
Duration:00:57:59
Modern Surveillance: Why You Should Care and What You Can Do: Jennifer Granick
5/4/2020
The future of privacy begins with the current state of surveillance. The 21st century practices of US intelligence agencies push the technological, legal and political limits of lawful surveillance. Jennifer Granick is a civil liberties and privacy law expert with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who is the perfect guide to how the system works and the technological and political means we have to defend our privacy. Jennifer Granick fights for civil liberties in an age of massive...
Duration:01:14:08
Disinformation Technology: How Online Propaganda Campaigns Are Influencing Us: Renée DiResta
4/6/2020
Clandestine influence campaigns are rampant on social media. Whether pushing Russian agitprop or lies about vaccines, they can impact policy and make us question what is true. A technologist, Wall Street veteran, and citizen advisor to Congress, DiResta will tell us how bad it is and some things we can do. Renée DiResta studies narrative manipulation as the Director of Research at New Knowledge. She is a Mozilla Foundation fellow on Media, Misinformation and Trust, and is affiliated with the...
Duration:01:12:25
The Five Ages of Burning Man: Michael Mikel
3/23/2020
Burning Man co-founder Michael Mikel (aka Danger Ranger), who serves as Director of Advanced Social Systems for the Burning Man Project will discuss the thirty-year history of the event. Outlining the five eras of Burning Man, he will explain how over time the event and organization have evolved and been molded by external and internal forces.
Duration:01:30:24
Engram Preservation: Early Work Towards Mind Uploading: Robert McIntyre
3/3/2020
Is it possible to preserve and read memories after someone has died? Robert McIntyre thinks it is, and that the technology is closer than most people realize. His company Nectome is working on documenting the physical properties of memory formation, and studying ways to preserve those physical properties after death. McIntyre has already won the Brain Preservation Institutes' "Small Mammal" & "Large Mammal" prizes for preserving a full brain down to the synaptic level, and is now taking the...
Duration:01:06:57
How to Be Futuristic: Bruce Sterling
2/18/2020
The future is a kind of history that hasn’t happened yet. The past is a kind of future that has already happened. The present moment vanishes before it can be described. Language, a human invention, lacks the power to fully adhere to reality. We live in a very short now and here, since the flow of events in spacetime is mostly closed to human comprehension. But we have to say something about the future, since we have to live there. So what can we say? Being “futuristic” is a problem in...
Duration:02:04:33
San Francisco Time: The Photography of Fred Lyon: Fred Lyon
2/12/2020
Fred Lyon is a time traveler with a camera and tales to tell. At 94-years-old, this former LIFE magazine photographer and fourth generation San Franciscan has an eye for the city and stories to match. We showed photos from Fred's books San Francisco, Portrait of a City: 1940-1960 and San Francisco Noir, and images spanning his diverse career. In conversation he'll discuss his art, work, and life; recollections of old friends like Herb Caen and Trader Vic Bergeron; and more. He shared his...
Duration:01:16:03