Ari Kuschnir, AI storyteller and artist,  takes us deep into the alchemy of AI storytelling as a form of social practice and activist imagination.

Known for provocative AI videos imagining figures like Trump, Elon Musk, and world leaders undergoing spiritual transformations, Kushnir talks about using AI as a creative collaborator and as a tool to challenge the cultural addiction to dystopia.

Along the way, they explore whether AI is flattening culture or opening new portals, why the future keeps being depicted as bleak, and what it might take to reclaim imagination as a collective human practice.

Mastering the Alchemy of Storytelling Course: https://www.liminal.news/mastering-the-alchemy-of-ai-storytelling | Use code: ALCHEMY-TEAMHUMAN for a discount

Learn more at: mssngpeces.com

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Rushkoff discusses why the urgency and inevitability of our situation calls for us to consider the impossible.

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Vicki Robin, author of classic books like Your Money or Your Life and Blessing and The Hands That Feed Us, and Rushkoff seek to embrace this challenging moment by embracing one another. Robin shares how growing older shifts your perspective from the personal to the universal, and why the questions we've been asking our whole lives might matter less than how we show up for each other.

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Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rushkoff.com

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Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct and integrator, helps us investigate the patterns of thought that have led our civilization to its current crisis of sustainability and develop the patterns of thought we need to get through to the other side.

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

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Use the code “rush10” to receive 10% off of Cobi Dryer sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/

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Follow Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff:

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Arden Leigh , the creator and facilitator of The Re-Patterning Project and front woman of Arden and the Wolves, helps us negotiate a new relationship to our individual and collective creative power.

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Could the end of employment be the beginning of something better? Rushkoff traces the history of work from medieval markets to AI automation to find hope in the cracks of collapse. He shows how the loss of “jobs” could open space for cooperation, creativity, and real human connection.

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Jonathan Larsen, Founder of The Fucking News, joins Rushkoff to discuss the 2025 U.S. Election and the path forward for Team Human.

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Andrew Slack, comedian and writer of Orphans, Empires, and the Search for a Better World, discusses the hidden history of corporate power, the mythic roots of American identity, and how hope - and solar panels - might just save us all.

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Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, unpacks the systemic forces behind digital monopolies, regulatory capture, the erosion of user rights, and how collective action and policy change can reclaim technology for the public good.

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Rushkoff offers a new way to interpret what appears to be the intentional dismantling of society as we know it: an elite who have lost faith in the system that has served them until now, and who believe a controlled demolition of government and the economy will position them better for the chaos ahead. He argues that just because the elite are committed to the end of the world, Team Human doesn't have to be. 

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Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse, explores why civilizations fall, what history gets wrong about collapse, and how distributed, cooperative societies have often thrived where empires failed.

Names referenced in this episode:

Jan Talon, Elon Musk, Genghis Khan, Niccolò Machiavelli, Andrew Carnegie, Francis Bacon, Harvey Whitehouse, Benedict Anderson, Audrey Tang, Edward Teller, Steve Bannon, Andrew Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani, Lot (biblical figure), King Tut, Jacob (biblical patriarch), Noah Yuval Harari

Team Human is proudly sponsored by Everyone's Earth.

Learn more about Everyone's Earth: https://everyonesearth.com/

Change Diapers: https://changediapers.com/

Cobi Dryer Sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/

Use the code “rush10” to receive 10% off of Cobi Dryer sheets: https://cobidryersheets.com/

Support Team Human on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman

Follow Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff:

Instagram: https:/www.instagram.com/douglasrushkoff

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rushkoff.com

Get bonus content on Patreon: patreon.com/teamhuman  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.