The Life Cycle

We've come a long way and where do we go next?  Who will we meet along the way? 

The season fades out as we imagine ways to travel beyond our solar system...Thanks for the ride.

Irina Mullins is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Houston Community College. She is also the creator of the ‘Cosmic Hitchhikers Hypothesis’. 

Cosmic Hitchhikers Hypothesis

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Many have heard about how the CIA introduced LSD to America, right? But did you know that they also wanted to introduce quantum entanglement and mind control? This episode revolves around an interview between John and David Kaiser, an American physicist and science historian. With David’s help, we take a look at how quantum evolved over the 20th century in both Europe and the US (and yes, even how the CIA and mindreading played a role). He also dives back into the topic of entanglement (or as Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance’) and sheds some light on the groundbreaking work of John Bell (who gave his name to the all-important Bell’s Theorem). 

David Kaiser is an American physicist and science historian. He is also a Professor of the History of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. David is the author of multiple books, including “How the Hippies Saved Physics”. 

LINKS

David Kaiser's Homepage

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What do you think of when you hear the word ‘quantum’? What even is quantum physics? What does it tell us about our world and universe, and what can it offer us in the future? In this episode, John and Eva meet up with executive producer Mundi in a London pub, and get sent on a special mission to discover as much as they can about the weird and wild world(s) of quantum science. 

Professor James Binney  is a British astrophysicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and former head of the Sub-Department of Theoretical Physics as well as an Emeritus Fellow of Merton College.

Mundi Vondi is an artist, fashion designer and co-founder and CEO of Klang Games. He is the executive producer of The Life Cycle podcast. 

LINKS

Prof James Binney at Oxford

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We continue our exploration of cloning with a closer look at how cloning and factory farming interact. Is animal cloning humane? Is it a technologically advanced key to the problems of factory farming? Or does it simply perpetuate the already existing issues? 

Peter Stevenson is Chief Policy Advisor for Compassion in World Farming, as well as a qualified solicitor. He has worked in the animal welfare sector for over three decades and played a leading role in winning EU bans on certain cages and crates in farming as well as passing EU legislation that recognizes animals as sentient beings.

Dorrit Moussaieff is an Israeli jewelry designer, editor, and businesswoman. She was the First Lady of Iceland from 2003 to 2016.

LINKS

Compassion in World Farming

Peter Stevenson

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Cloning has long been a pillar of sci-fi tales. But now it's here, as is CRISPR technology - gene editing. What does this all look like exactly and how does it work? And more importantly, are we already eating clones at the dinner table? 

Professor Rudolf Jaenisch is a Professor of Biology at MIT and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

Dorrit Moussaieff is an Israeli jewelry designer, editor, and businesswoman. She was the First Lady of Iceland from 2003 to 2016.

LINKS

Professor Rudolf Jaenisch

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research

ViaGen

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Could AI make this entire episode? And replace Eva and John altogether? In this episode we look at the range of tools and solutions that AI offers right now, and look at where it might go in the future. It feels like every week there's a new development in AI: in this episode we hear from this rapidly changing frontline. Including from within Klang Games itself!


Constant Dullaart is a Dutch conceptual artist, media artist, internet artist, and curator. His work is deeply connected to the Internet.

Sarah Al-Hussaini is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ultimate.ai, the leading European virtual agent platform for customer support.

Evans Thomas is a Game Engineer at Klang Games, who is helping build SEED, a large-scale, persistent virtual world that is pushing the boundaries of what constitutes an MMO world by offering a completely player-made universe.

LINKS

Ultimate.ai

Constant Dullaart

Klang Games

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I am a paperclip. Just don’t call me Mr. Clippy. Pull up a chair and listen to this humorous tale that tells the history - and possible future - of the humble paperclip. In this little interlude we bring together some of the various themes of the season, from Operation Paperclip (episode 2) to the future of AI and AGI. Inventions and innovations, progress and science. Because remember, the trouble is we have no idea how to imagine The Singularity. 

LINKS

Nick Bostrom

The clicker game Decision Problems by Frank Lutz 

Von Neumann Probes

John Holten is a novelist and Klang Game’s Narrative Director. His novels include Oslo, Norway (2015) and The Readymades (2011). His writing has recently appeared in Welt am Sonntag, frieze, and The Stinging Fly.

Eva Kelley is a journalist and writer. Her writing focuses on contemporary culture and has appeared in publications such as 032c, ZEITMagazin, Interview Magazine, Hearts, and on SSENSE.com among others.

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The future of booze. What does it taste like? Join us while we look at the role of the oldest of human concoctions: alcohol, and how it we may just be on the cusp of a radical revolution in all things inebriation. 

Professor David Nutt is a neuropsychopharmacologist and the Co-Founder of GABA Labs. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Drug Science, a UK based independednt drug advisory committee. 

LINKS:

GABA Labs

Sentia

Drug Science 

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Hear that? In the blink of an eye we could be not just contacted but overtaken by loud aliens. Are we , here on earth, quiet aliens in the universe? What is the difference exactly between loud and quiet aliens? And if we’re ever going to become loud aliens, traveling the cosmos, how would we manage such a civilisation-wide endeavor when we seem to only ever disagree, humanity's history being mainly one of war and division? Perhaps the Internet can offer a way to work together, to learn to be one world. Metagovernance could be one such tool to help us get there. In this episode Klang advisor Adam Philippson point John and Eva toward Robin Hanson about his latest theory of ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ aliens, and Klang friends Prof. Laurence Lessig and Joshua Tan about the exciting possibilities of metagovernance. 

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason Univeristy. He is the author of The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule The Earth, among other titles.

Joshua Tan is the executive director of The Metagovernance Project, as well as a practitioner fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab. He is also a doctoral student studying computer science at Oxford University. 

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. He was also the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

LINKS

Grabby Aliens

The Metagovernance Project 

Robin Hanson’s Homepage

Joshua Tan’s Homepage

More Info on Lawrence Lessig

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It’s the age of Artemis! This means humanity is going back to the moon. And beyond! But where did this journey begin exactly? We’ve got a wild story that involves Nazis, bad novels, Walt Disney and the tyranny of the rocket equation. Listen as we explore the life and work of Wernher von Braun and the space race of the 1960s before looking to the present day Artemis programme and even the future of interstellar travel beyond the solar system. It’s time to back-up Earth, ready for a reboot.

Dr. Michael J. Neufeld is is a Senior Curator in the Space History Department at the Smithsonian and author of The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (1995), among other titles.

Avi Loeb is a theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology at Harvard. His newest book, Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars, is planned to be published in 2023.

LINKS

Space Scouts By Adam Phillipson 

For All Mankind on Apple+

Disneyland 1955 - Man in Space - Wernher Von Braun

Tom Lehrer’s "Wernher Von Braun"

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What connects the first ever recorded science fiction story with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove? And who was the real live person that Strangelove was modelled on? We all know that to understand the future we have to understand the past, so that’s why we’re starting the season deep underground in the site of ancient Roman London. In this episode Eva and John get two different takes on apocalyptic story telling, figuring out if there’s something inherently human in our fascination with the end times.  

Featuring: 

Christopher Star is professor of Classics at Middlebury College, and the author of Apocalypse and Golden Age: The End of the World in Greek and RomanThought (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. 

Chiara Di Leone is a writer and researcher, her writing has most recently appeared in NOEMA, Kaleidoscope and Tank magazine, among others.

LINKS

Chiara Di Leone’s Linktree

Christopher Star’s Homepage

Review of Prof. Star’s Apocalypse and Golden Age

Discover Roman London 

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Welcome back! To this, the second season of The Life Cycle. We're calling this season 'Now What?' Because every day we’re told the world is ending. But what does that mean? And if it is, what can we do about it? Should our hopes lie in the great beyond (outer space) or in the quantum realm of matter itself? Are there new ways to get blotto and party like it's 1999? Should we be cloning our dogs - or the food we eat, or indeed, ourselves? Join us as we go on a storytelling journey, as we take an irreverent and curious look at the future of humanity. We interview some fascinating thinkers, creators, inventors, artists and business people as we navigate the past, present and future. Now What? A whole lot, it seems…

John Holten is a novelist and Klang Game’s Narrative Director. His novels include Oslo, Norway (2015) and The Readymades (2011). His writing has recently appeared in Welt am Sonntag, frieze, and The Stinging Fly.

Eva Kelley is a journalist and writer. Her writing focuses on contemporary culture and has appeared in publications such as 032c, ZEITMagazin, Interview Magazine, Hearts, and on SSENSEcom among others.

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15% of all human consciousness that has ever existed is present and happening today: as we speed up and grow ever more connected via the Internet, what are the implications for this massive digital shift? In this episode, renowned Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig discusses the present state of the digital landscape and its impact on notions of freedom and democracy. For good or for bad, how will this new era play out in the years to come? The last episode in Season One looks resolutely into the near future.

Featuring Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professor, Founder of Creative Commons, and Author.

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Is your brain a machine? Are your thoughts and feelings just malware of the mind? But what is 'really' is a machine? Welcome listeners to the transhumanist fight of the century. In the blue corner, we have Eva meeting founder and CEO of Kernel, Bryan Johnson, straight from his office in LA. And in the red corner, John meets with writer Mark O'Connell in a cafe in Dublin. Time to get out the popcorn! Round One, ding-ding...

Featuring Founder and CEO of Kernel, Bryan Johnson. And writer Mark O'Connell, author of To Be a Machine.

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Eva has followed the story to Georgia, USA and tracked Dr. Phil down at his neurological practice. In the back of the surgery and after his original patients have left, Dr. Phil carries out some mind-blowing experiments - on himself, and others. Brain interfacing is a bold new frontier for our ability to understand our minds - and in turn, help us to communicate.

Featuring Dr. Phil Kennedy, Neurologist and Founder of Neural Signals, inc.

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In this episode, John turns up to hear Eva has discovered a story she’s pretty certain will pique his interest. She starts to tell him about a transhuman hero by the name of Dr. Phil Kennedy, and it leads to some pretty interesting places by way of Belize. By the end of the episode, Eva will have left the building, getting on a Trans-Atlantic flight to follow the story….

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John and Eva go down the rabbit hole and question what is reality itself and whether or not we are in fact in a large scale simulation. Possibly one made by aliens. Or indeed our future descendants. We are such stuff as dreams are made on - who is to say we aren’t?

Featuring Joshua Tan, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Oxford. And, Prof. Stefan Sorgner, Professor of Philosophy, John Cabot University, Rome.

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In this episode, John and Eva stare up at the night sky and get deep. Some of those age-old stoner questions are posed: where are all the aliens? Are we alone in the universe? Could it be that we’re just pets in some zoo run by alien overlords? Does this mean everything we do is meaningless? And what has Jodie Foster got to say about it all? Time to get your SETI on, folks...

Featuring Joshua Tan, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Oxford.

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Beginning with the end of things - this episode kicks off The Life Cycle by asking: is there going to be a future to speak of at all? Why is it that the apocalypse is no longer just the reserve of religion, but now dominates everything from our Netflix viewing to our conversations with friends and family? And what can we learn from global climate strikes?

Featuring Joshua Tan, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Oxford.

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Introducing The Life Cycle, an offbeat journey toward the future of humanity, featuring some of the world's top innovators – and disruptors. A podcast about tech, transhumanism, future politics, brain uploads, and life as we do not yet know it. Produced by Klang Games. Transmitting soon.

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