Technology is taking on a mythic mantle as we look to our creations to supply us with a sense of belonging and purpose, but this is a category error because tech cannot honestly deliver on these promises. In this podcast Tom Chatfield explores some of the issues bound up with the ways we are thinking about technology. • Technology is not a bolt-on or option ... Show More
Oct 5
Michael Sacasas - What should you be doing for yourself, even if a machine can do it for you?
In this episode Michael Sacasas explores what humans should keep doing even when machines can do it faster, cheaper, and “better,” and why convenience can quietly erode competence, attention, and relationship. We explore how friction, effort, and embodied practice can be part of ... Show More
54m 18s
Sep 28
Sherry Turkle - What Is The Endgame?
In this episode I speak to Sherry Turkle about why generative AI feels intimate, why that intimacy is often a simulation, and what we lose when we outsource love, care, and growth to machines. We keep returning to one question: what is the end game of letting AI become a friend, ... Show More
57m 12s
Aug 7
Meaning & Mortality - Reflections On Series 4
We pull together the strongest takeaways from months of conversations on death, grief, and loss, and we share why these topics reach so many people despite how easy they are to avoid. We explore how facing finitude can sharpen our values, deepen our love of life, and help us beco ... Show More
23m 27s
Nov 2025
The Technological Soul: Alex Priou on Modernity, Ideology, and the Limits of Reason
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny speaks with Alex Priou, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Austin, about how technology and ideology shape the modern soul. From Machiavelli’s “dikes and dams” to Odysseus’s struggle ag ... Show More
1h 10m
Apr 2022
The Life We’re Looking For
In the quiet moments of our lives, we can all sense that our hearts long for something, though we often don’t know what that something is. We seek an answer in our phones, and while they can provide some sense of extension and fulfillment — a feeling of magic — the use of technol ... Show More
56 m
Aug 2024
How to make yourself more human in an automated world (from How to Be a Better Human)
Kevin Roose is a tech journalist who writes about the intersection of tech, business, and culture. In today’s episode from How to Be a Better Human, another podcast in the TED Audio Collective, he talks about the shift of technology’s role in our lives and how we can set up bound ... Show More
34m 23s
Nov 2020
#226 — The Price of Distraction
Sam Harris speaks with Adam Gazzaley about the way our technology is changing us. They discuss our limited ability to process information, our failures of multitasking, "top-down" vs "bottom-up" attention, self-interruptions and switching costs, anxiety, boredom, "digital medicin ... Show More
44m 18s