Futurology

Democracy counts people, not plants. Humans are only a sliver of life on this planet, but today, we're the only ones who get a vote. What if we gave rights to rivers and standing to trees?

In this episode, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats says it's time to make every species count. The environmental movement has spent decades claiming to speak for the trees. In his new book, "A Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance," Keats says we need to recognize that the trees can speak for themselves. He walks us through how we should expand the franchise by tapping the polling systems already in place from peat moss to slime mold and rodents to rhododendrons. Governance for all creatures, great and small.

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The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

A Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance — Jonathon Keats (Book, 2026) — also as ePub

Centuries of the Bristlecone — Jonathon Keats (Artwork, 2026)

Assembly of Trees — Jonathon Keats (Artwork, 2024)

Jargon Watch — Jonathon Keats (Wired column)

A Portent of Climates to Come: On the Telling Rings of the Bristlecone Pine — Grant Slater (Film, 2013)

Should Trees Have Standing? — Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects — Christopher D. Stone (Essay, 1972)

68 Quadrillion Underground Miles of Fungi — Emily Anthes (New York Times, 2026)

Where to find Jonathon Keats:

Berggruen Institute: https://berggruen.org/people/jonathon-keats

Earth Law Center: https://www.earthlawcenter.org/jonathon-keats

“A Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance” (Berggruen Press, 2026): https://berggruen.org/library/a-field-guide-to-more-than-human-governance

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

futurology@berggruen.org



Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

https://www.berggruen.org



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Credits



Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson



Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Somewhere around the Enlightenment we decided that thinking was what made us human. We built our schools, careers, and sense of worth at the altar of intelligence. Now machines are passing us on that rubric, which leaves two possibilities: we were replaceable all along, or we picked the wrong standard to live by.

In this episode, Arianna Huffington, founder & CEO of Thrive Global, argues the latter, saying even our name, sapiens, never meant intelligent: it means wise. She calls this rightsizing of intelligence the fourth dethronement, after Galileo, quantum physics, and Freud. What takes the throne now is the part of us she would simply call the soul.

Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

"AI's Greatest Gift To Humanity" — Arianna Huffington (Essay, 2026)

The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time — Arianna Huffington (Book, 2016)

Picasso: Creator and Destroyer — Arianna Huffington (Book, 1988)

Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder — Arianna Huffington (Book, 2014)

The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul — Arianna Huffington (Book, 1994)

After Reason — Arianna Huffington (Book, 1978)

The Survival of the Wisest — Jonas Salk (Book, 1973)

Where to find Arianna Huffington:

Website: https://www.ariannahuffington.com

Thrive Global: https://www.thriveglobal.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ariannahuffington

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

X: x.com/ariannahuff

Facebook: facebook.com/AriannaHuffington

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

futurology@berggruen.org

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

https://www.berggruen.org

Follow Futurology!

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Twitter/X: / futurologypod

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Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Relying on machines to coordinate our lives was just one step toward decentering humanity’s role in the world. Flights, banking, trade, food production... But as we start merging our actual decision-making with digital entities, exactly which pieces of humanity are we leaving behind? And how might we bring those pieces back?

In this episode, famed posthumanist scholar N. Katherine Hayles makes the case that while AI is still wildly inefficient at the cognitive processes our biology has carefully perfected over millennia, we’re already irreversibly merged with it. Hayles has spent forty years at the intersection of science, tech, and literature, leading her to a radical interpretation of what it means to be human today: only as special as the organisms and machines we align ourselves with. Next up, she says, is those machines adopting the very analog processes that created them.

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Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298

Mentioned in this Episode

Books

Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts — N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics — N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 1999)

The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century — N. Katherine Hayles (Cornell University Press, 1984)

Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account — Gualtiero Piccinini (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials — Laura Tripaldi (Urbanomic, 2022)

Solaris — Stanisław Lem (novel, 1961)

Where to find N. Katherine Hayles

UCLA English faculty page: https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/hayles-katherine-n/

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

futurology@berggruen.org

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

https://www.berggruen.org

Follow Futurology!

Instagram: / futurologypod

Twitter/X: / futurologypod

Tiktok: / futurologypod

Facebook: / berggrueninst

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Bluesky: / futurologypod

Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson

Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Technologists have feared (or prayed for) the singularity as a rapture-like inevitability for nearly 70 years. In an instant, they believed, our machine intelligence will overtake us and race ahead. Kevin Kelly says that moment has passed. Human intelligence is already receding to a speck in the rearview mirror of robots imbued with God-like powers. But we’re still here.

In this episode, Kelly puts the question of how to build moral AI in religious and spiritual terms. Kelly co-founded Wired and spent decades earning a reputation as a technological prophet. Now he calls himself a heretic, arguing that organized religion will be transformed, if not destroyed, by contact with a host of alien intelligences. If we want to survive this encounter, our understanding of God may matter more than any computer code.

Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod

The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode

Out of Control — Kevin Kelly (Book, 1994)

What Technology Wants — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2010)

The Inevitable — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2016)

God Is the Machine — Kevin Kelly (Essay, Wired, 2002)

The Coming Technological Singularity — Vernor Vinge (Essay, 1993)

Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process — Adam Frank, David Grinspoon and Sara Walker (Paper, 2022)

Shoulda Been Dead — This American Life (Radio, episode 50)

Where to find Kevin Kelly:

kk.org: https://kk.org

Wired: https://www.wired.com

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

futurology@berggruen.org

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

https://www.berggruen.org

Follow Futurology!

Instagram: / futurologypod

Twitter/X: / futurologypod

Tiktok: / futurologypod

Facebook: / berggrueninst

LinkedIn: / berggrueninst

Bluesky: / futurologypod



Credits



Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson



Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

With prediction markets, gambling has gone ambient. To place your bets, you don't need to visit a casino floor, a racetrack, or your corner bookie. Now any uncertain thing on Earth could be the next big short. Wildfires, missile strikes, the next word out of a president's mouth. Every disagreement has a spread, every catastrophe a payout.

In this episode, NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn follows the money through Kalshi and Polymarket, the fast-growing, barely regulated prediction markets that have gotten tight with the Trump administration. These apps democratize insider trading. When reality pays out, the incentive isn't to predict what happens next. It's to make it happen.

Subscribe to Futurology on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@Futurologypod

The Futurology Podcast — full episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwkiuf1eRbAAHP4p--2IFJbn0CIdaZMva

Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Wisdom of Crowds — James Surowiecki (Book, 2004)

Google Zero is here — now what? — Nilay Patel, The Verge (Article, 2024)

Iowa Electronic Markets — University of Iowa (Prediction market experiment, est. 1988)

A Cosmic Voyage Through Deep Time — (with Ross Andersen and Grant Slater) — Futurology (Episode, 2025)

Where to find Bobby Allyn

NPR

X

Bluesky

Instagram

Show ideas and feedback? Email:

futurology@berggruen.org

Learn more about the Berggruen Institute

https://www.berggruen.org

Follow Futurology!

Instagram: / futurologypod

Twitter/X: / futurologypod

Tiktok: / futurologypod

Facebook: / berggrueninst

LinkedIn: / berggrueninst

Bluesky: / futurologypod

Credits

Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch

Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos

Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney

Theme Music: Marcus Bagala

Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson



Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.